Associated Products
“A Moroccan Tale of an Outlandish Europe: Ben Jelloun’s Departures for a Double Exile” (Article)Title: “A Moroccan Tale of an Outlandish Europe: Ben Jelloun’s Departures for a Double Exile”
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: By exploring the relations between Morocco and Spain, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel Partir provides a critical stance on migration and intercultural exchanges between Africa and Europe that transcends a unilateral indictment of European community-building policies and at the same time refrains from a heroization of the migrant plight as much as from the paternalizing approach it often disguises.
Through what it defines as the “migrant bovarysm” in Partir, this article discusses Ben Jelloun’s ambivalent position on issues of exile and hospitality between Africa and Europe highlighting the joint (albeit different) responsibilities of the two continents. The idealizations and prejudices emerging from both Mediterranean shores confine the novel’s would-be Europeans to a liminal, spectral condition that ultimately alienates them from their homeland as much as from their destination culture. Partir hence questions ethnic policies on a global scale and the liberating prospect of cultural hybridity as creolization beyond borders, by depicting the Mediterranean at once as threshold and bulwark between cultures.
Year: 2009
Primary URL:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Research in African Literatures
Publisher: Indiana University Press
“On the Threshold, Always Homeward Bound: Claudio Magris’s European journey” (Article)Title: “On the Threshold, Always Homeward Bound: Claudio Magris’s European journey”
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: An exploration of the connection between domesticity and estrangement as the quintessence of European identity in selected works by Italian and Mitteleuropean writer Claudio Magris
Year: 2012
Primary URL:
http://jes.sagepub.com/Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of European Studies
Publisher: Sage Publications
The Year 3000 (Book)Title: The Year 3000
Author: Mantegazza, Paolo
Editor: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: First published in 1897, The Year 3000 is the most daring and original work of fiction by the prominent Italian anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza. In this futuristic utopian novel, two young lovers travel from Rome to the capital of the United Planetary States which supplanted the United States of Europe. The purpose of their journey is to celebrate their “mating union” which will occur after they encounter the marvels of cultural and scientific advances along the way. Intriguing in itself, The Year 3000 is also remarkable for both its vision of the future (predicting an astonishing array of phenomena from airplanes, artificial intelligence, CAT scans, and credit cards to controversies surrounding divorce, abortion, and euthanasia) and the window it opens on fin de siècle Europe. What is at stake in the novel is not simply the issue of cultural relations among different European nations but also the issue of nationness itself, and the institutional question of Europe as a supranational construct.
Year: 2010
Primary URL:
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Year-3000,674648.aspxPrimary URL Description:
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780803230323
Translator: David Jacobson
"Memorie del futuro. Archeologie letterarie d’Europa" (Book Section)Title: "Memorie del futuro. Archeologie letterarie d’Europa"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Editor: Elena Coda
Editor: Beppe Cavatorta
Abstract: In the context of debates on Europeanness that develop in Risorgimento Italy simultaneously with ideologies of patriotism and nationhood, this article analyzes two late nineteenth-century Italian novels -- Antonio Ghislanzoni's _Abrakadabra_ and Paolo Mantegazza's _L'anno 3000_-, both imagining a future European federation.
Year: 2010
Publisher: Danilo Montanari
Book Title: Balleriniana
"Passing for Europe: linguistic transvestism and transnational identities in Diego Marani's _Nuova grammatica finlandese_" (Book Section)Title: "Passing for Europe: linguistic transvestism and transnational identities in Diego Marani's _Nuova grammatica finlandese_"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Editor: Federica Pedriali
Editor: Rossella Riccobono
Abstract: Focusing on the novel _Nuova grammatica finlandese_ by contemporary Italian writer Diego Marani, this article applies the notion of transvestism to the question of multilingualism as a form of identitarian complexity able to negotiate between nation-ness and Europeanness.
Year: 2007
Publisher: Longo
Book Title: Vested Voices
"Paolo Mantegazza, Fabulator of the Future" (Book Section)Title: "Paolo Mantegazza, Fabulator of the Future"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Editor: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: In the context of late nineteenth-century European early science fiction, this essay examines Italian anthropologist and novelist Paolo Mantegazza's transnational conceptualization of the future as an extension and overcoming of the Europeanist discourse of his time.
Year: 2010
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Book Title: Paolo Mantegazza, _The Year 3000. A Dream_
"Temporary Housing: Claudio Magris's Europeanness" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: "Temporary Housing: Claudio Magris's Europeanness"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: Most critical analyses on Claudio Magris explore the complex question of individual and collective identity in his essayistic and creative works through the motifs of fluidity (embodied above all by the sea) and of travel (especially in connection with the ambivalence of the frontier).
However, less attention has been paid to the significance of a related cluster of images and concepts, namely, actual dwelling or symbolic homeliness, which, in a dialectical tension with fluidity and travel, play an equally crucial role in Magris’s writing, interweaving the biographical sphere of personal experiences and memories with the historical, political and cultural underpinnings of the idea of homeland, ranging from the local and regional levels to the national and transnational dimensions (Europe in particular).
This presentation highlights how notions like ‘temporary housing’, ‘literature as relocation’ or the more general concept of ‘threshold’ emerging from such essays as _Lontano da dove_, _Utopia e disincanto_, _Itaca e Oltre_ and _L'infinito viaggiare_ find fertile ground in the form and content of Magris’s own narrative and plays, where they frame what I define as the “poetics and ethics of Europeanness” contained in Magris’s overall oeuvre. As my analysis aims to show, Magris’s creative production hence authenticates a theoretical reflection on the significance of ‘home’ for identitarian, linguistic, and political purposes that also reconceptualizes Europe as geographical and temporal lodging and dislodgement.
Date: 10/02/2010
Conference Name: Europe in Its Own Eyes/Europe in the Eyes of the Other
“Narrare l’Europa, (de)costruire la democrazia" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Narrare l’Europa, (de)costruire la democrazia"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: The destiny of democracy in Europe is being discussed from multiple perspectives. However, very little attention has been devoted so far to literature as an expressive form able not only to reelaborate creatively the main issues of the process of Europeanization but also to contribute to the very formation of the debate on European questions, anticipating positions that take shape only later in other disciplines.
My paper intends to examine the modalities with which the notion of democracy intervenes in the many literary transfigurations of the idea of Europe. Through the discussion of essays and novels representative of an explicitly European AND democratic consciousness, I linger on the ideological, political, cultural and linguistic implications of such a connection, highlighting potentialities and problems.
From the Europeanist idylss of Denis De Rougemont, to Stefan Zweig's "Europe of yesterday", from Diego Marani's "europanto” to the pseudo-Europeanization of Ben Jelloun's migrants, from Claudio Magris's anti-globalization Europe to Tim Parks's "euro-scepticism", I emphasize how, in the realm of imagination, to think and rethink Europe means, above all, to think and rethink democracy inside and outside its mobile boundaries, laying bare its aporiae. The literature of Europe plays an ethical role. It monitors and denounces the inconsistencies and hypcrisies of the connection between Europe and democracy.
In my essay, the literary thematization of the European question provides the context to analyze the role of the narrative dimension in the critique of democracy. Narrating Europe, writing constructs and deconstructs, in the Derridian sense, its democratic ambitions. It reduces the exportability of concepts and values upon which its alleged "society of citizens" is founded or should be founded, and warns against inauthentic egalitarianism and “political correctness”.
Date: 05-22-2009
Primary URL:
http://www.fondazionesum.it/content/ITA/documenti/convegnoNisa09.pdfConference Name: Il destino della democrazia. Relativismo e universalizzazione
Paolo Mantegazza: Weltliteratur all’italiana (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Paolo Mantegazza: Weltliteratur all’italiana
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: An investigation of the European, transnational ideology underlying Paolo Mantegazza's theory of translation, seen as a reconceptualization of Goethe's notion of "Weltliteratur".
Date: 12-29-2009
Conference Name: Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, 27-30 December 2009
“’De pizza habe disappeared!”. Italy, Europe, Europanto” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “’De pizza habe disappeared!”. Italy, Europe, Europanto”
Abstract: "Wat passe?". What has happened to Italian language and identity in the European scenario of Diego Marani’s fiction? "Aqui in Venezia sumus, keine Paris!"… Really? An Italian newspaper columnist, novelist and translator for the Council of the European Union, Diego Marani invented an artificial language called Europanto in which he has been writing articles and short stories since 1996. More than a mock international language with a provocative aim, Europanto offers the model for a non-hierarchical European subjectivity that erodes national linguistic barriers and also the all-encompassing power of English as Europe’s alleged lingua franca.
"Eh? Wat signifique?" "No! No esse so facile!"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Date: 11-16-2010
Location: Italian Cultural Institute of Washington DC and Georgetown University
Primary URL:
http://www.iicwashington.esteri.it/IIC_Washington/webform/SchedaEvento.aspx?id=291“’De pizza habe disappeared!’ Italy, Europe, Europanto" (Blog Post)Title: “’De pizza habe disappeared!’ Italy, Europe, Europanto"
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: "Wat passe?". What has happened to Italian language and identity in the European scenario of Diego Marani’s fiction? "Aqui in Venezia sumus, keine Paris!"… Really? An Italian newspaper columnist, novelist and translator for the Council of the European Union, Diego Marani invented an artificial language called Europanto in which he has been writing articles and short stories since 1996. More than a mock international language with a provocative aim, Europanto offers the model for a non-hierarchical European subjectivity that erodes national linguistic barriers and also the all-encompassing power of English as Europe’s alleged lingua franca.
"Eh? Wat signifique?" "No! No esse so facile!"
Date: 11-16-2010
Primary URL:
http://issuu.com/iicwashington/docs/piredduWebsite:
http://issuu.com/iicwashington/docs/piredduClaudio Magris's _Alla Cieca_: For a Literature of Values (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Claudio Magris's _Alla Cieca_: For a Literature of Values
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: An introductory discussion of Claudio Magris's novel _Alla cieca_ with an investigation on the responsibility of Europe in the universal clash of civilizations portrayed in the book.
Date: 10/02/2010
Conference Name: International Symposium "Europe in Its Own Eyes/Europe in the Eyes of the Other", University of Guelph, October 1-3, 2010
“Europantizing Europe: A New Humanism for the Old Continent?”, (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Europantizing Europe: A New Humanism for the Old Continent?”,
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: An exploration of the linguistic and cultural policy of "Europanto", an artificial language created by Italian writer Diego Marani out of fragments and calques of different European idioms, as a provocative attempt to erode the current domination of the English language within the EU.
Date: 04/03/2010
Conference Name: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, 1-4 April 2010
The fraternal continent and its fictions (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The fraternal continent and its fictions
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Abstract: An examination of major pronouncements on Europe's alleged geographical and historical cohesiveness, leading to an emphasis on the crucial role of fiction in the construction of Europeanness
Date: 03/26/2009
Conference Name: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Harvard University, 26-28 March 2009
Scribes of a transnational Europe (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Scribes of a transnational Europe
Abstract: What is the role of writers who connect different national European traditions, and who incorporate multiple European languages in their works? Can the European subject envisage a symbolic self-recreation without reinstating intellectual Eurocentrism?
Author: Nicoletta Pireddu
Date: 04/04/2009
Location: "Space and Place In the Literature, Language, Culture and Film Of the German-Speaking World", Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service and Department of German
The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders (Book)Title: The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders
Author: Pireddu, Nicoletta
Abstract: The first English book on contemporary Italian writer Claudio Magris, this study examines the connections between space and individual, national and European identity in his works. Magris invites us to cross the borders that enclose private and public spheres in order to discover the otherness within ourselves and reject the fanaticism of self-sameness. Through the recurring image of temporary homes, the book explores Magris's incessant search for meaning and values, aiming at a habitable life, where diversity and tolerance can prevail over all fundamentalisms. With a sophisticated theoretical framework, this innovative analysis involves Magris's entire fiction and non-fiction writings, down to his most recent, still untranslated collections. With what Pireddu calls "geography of domesticity," Magris addresses the crucial question of the return to humanism that is moving literature and theory beyond the alleged death of the subject, and confirms the enduring value of the humanities as a critical and constructive tool.
Year: 2015
Primary URL:
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-works-of-claudio-magris-nicoletta-pireddu/?isb=9781137492623Primary URL Description: Book description available in Palgrave catalogue
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781137492623
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes