Transmissions of Memory : Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post–World War II Italian Culture

Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture discusses cultural products — films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media — to individuate through them the dynamics of memory. The field of analysis is Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times, and the volume has in a gendered approach one of its focuses, offering an encompassing view on cultural memory and highlighting the similarities between gendered revisitation and revisitation of the past. The volume is divided into three sections: cultural transmissions, fractured memories, and nostalgia. In the chapters herewith the study of memory through these forms hints at a sense of transformation and often enrichment or resilience, individual or collective, that values more the present and the future rather than the past. Introduction -- Memory as cultural transmission. Calvino, Eco and the transmission of world literature / Martin McLaughlin -- Montale's Xenia: between myth and poetic tradition / Adele Bardazzi -- Repressed memory and traumatic history in Alberto Moravia's The woman of Rome / Charles L. Leavitt IV -- Reconstructing the maternal: transmission of memory, cultural translation and transnational identity in Igiaba Scego's La mia casa è dove sono / Maria Cristina Seccia -- Trauma and divided memory. At the edge: divided memory on Italy's borders: the case of Trieste and the Foibe di Basovizza / John Foot -- Remembering war: memory and history in Claudio Magris's Blameless / Sandra Parmegiani -- Blood, sand and stone: Trieste's transcultural memories / Katia Pizzi -- The trauma of liberation: rape, love and violence in wartime Italy / David W. Ellwood -- Between past and present, self and other: liminality and the transmission of traumatic memory in Elena Ferrante's La figlia oscura / Torunn Haaland -- Memory as nostalgia. Mother-daughter nostalgia in the Abruzzi of Donatella di Petrantonio / Patrizia Sambuco -- A future without nostalgia: remembering second-wave feminism in Mia madre femminista and Fra me e te / Andrea Hajek -- Transnational nostalgia in an all-female Italian Facebook group and cooking blog/ Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra -- Index Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Section I: Memory as Cultural Transmission 21 1 Calvino, Eco, and the Transmission of World Literature 23 2 Montale’s Xenia 41 3 Repressed Memory and Traumatic History in Alberto Moravia’s The Woman of Rome 59 4 Reconstructing the Maternal 75 Section II: Trauma and Divided Memory 91 5 At the Edge. Divided Memory on Italy’s Borders 93 6 Remembering War 111 7 Blood, Sand, and Stone 129 8 The Trauma of Liberation 145 9 Between Past and Present, Self and Other 163 Section III: Memory as Nostalgia 181 10 Mother-Daughter Nostalgia in the Abruzzi of Donatella Di Pietrantonio 183 11 A Future without Nostalgia 197 12 Transnational Nostalgia in an All-Female Italian Facebook Group and Cooking Blog 217 Index 231 Contributors 235 The volume is divided into three sections: cultural transmissions, fractured memories, and nostalgia, to individuate through cultural products—films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media—the dynamics of memory within Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times.