Recent Acquisitions in French
These important resources are now available at Colby’s Miller and Bixler libraries (acquired since July 2007).
Recent Acquisitions in Italian
These important resources are now available at Colby’s Miller and Bixler libraries (acquired since July 2007).
A sample of acquisitions can be found below.
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Women writers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy reinvigorated the modern epistolary novel through their re-fashioning of the genre as a tool for examining women’s roles and experiences. Addressing the Letter argues that many epistolary novels purposely tie narrative structure to thematic content, creating in the process powerful texts that reflect and challenge literary and socio-cultural norms. Through the lens of the genre, Laura A. Salsini considers how the works of authors including the Marchesa Colombi, Sibilla Aleramo, Gianna Manzini, Natalia Ginzburg, and Oriana Fallaci highlight such issues as love, the loss of ideals, lack of communication and connection, and feminist ideology. She also analyses what may be the first woman-authored Italian example of epistolary fiction: Orintia Romagnuoli Sacrati’s Lettere di Giulia Willet (1818). In their reworking of the epistolary narrative form, Italian women writers challenged dominant assumptions about female behaviours, roles, relationships, and sexuality in modern Italy. |
 Au pays de Gabrielle RoyAnnette Saint-Pierre Plaines, c2005 Avec le souvenir du regard scintillant de Gabrielle Roy, Annette Saint-Pierre nous invite à parcourir le destin de l’une des figures les plus marquantes de la littérature canadienne. Au pays de Gabrielle Roy se présente moins dans les détails de la vie et de l’œuvre de Gabrielle, dont plus d’un biographe ont déjà fait état, mais dans la richesse de la vie familiale et de la maison natale dans laquelle l’auteur de Bonheur d’occasion a évolué. De la Montagne Pembina à Saint-Boniface, jusqu’à l’exode et le devenir de chacun de ses frères et soeurs, ce livre clef d’une grande érudition dévoile une Gabrielle Roy inconnue — lettres inédites à l’appui — au cœur de son intimité. |
 Afrique sur Seine : a new generation of African writers in ParisOdile Cazenave Lexington Books, c2005 Afrique sur Seine addresses the development since the 1950s of a new type of Francophone African novel created by first-generation black African authors living in France. Drawing parallels with other literatures like the beur and Antillean novels, Odile Cazenave examines how these authors, men and women, are parting from mainstream African literature by exploring more personal avenues while retaining a shared interest in the community of African emigrants. At a time when immigration is an important issue in France, and when post-colonial identity and culture is the object of still increasing interest and attention, Afrique sur Seine surprises with its fresh insights into multiculturalism and integration. |
 I Was an Elephant Salesman : Adventures Between Dakar, Paris, and MilanPap Khouma; edited by Oreste Pivetta; translated by Rebecca Hopkins; introduction by Graziella Parati Indiana University Press, c2010 A landmark bestseller in Italy, I Was an Elephant Salesman gives a name and a face to the thousands of anonymous African street vendors in cities across Europe. Through the voice of a thinly veiled first-person narrator, Pap Khouma offers us a chilling, intimate, and often ironic glimpse into the life of an illegal immigrant. Khouma invents a life for himself as an itinerant trader of carved elephants, small ivories, and other “African” trinkets, struggling to maintain courage and dignity in the face of despair and humiliation. Constantly on the run from the authorities, he finds insight into the vicissitudes of law and politics, the constraints of citizenship, national borders, skin color, and the often paralyzing difficulties of obtaining basic human needs. His story reveals a contemporary Europe struggling to come to terms with its multiracial, multireligious, and multicultural identity. |
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John Conteh-Morgan explores the multiple ways in which African and Caribbean theatres have combined aesthetic, ceremonial, experimental, and avant-garde practices in order to achieve sharp critiques of the nationalist and postnationalist state and to elucidate the concerns of the francophone world. More recent changes have introduced a transnational dimension, replacing concerns with national and ethnic solidarity in favor of irony and self-reflexivity. New Francophone African and Caribbean Theatres places these theatres at the heart of contemporary debates on global cultural and political practices and offers a more finely tuned understanding of performance in diverse diasporic networks. |
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The poetics of Dante’s Paradiso Paradiso, the conclusion to Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, is an exploration of the nine celestial spheres of Heaven. A highly original and comprehensive reading, The Poetics of Dante’s Paradiso challenges established scholarly interpretations to demonstrate that the intricacies of Dante’s text reveal a subtle irony, employed to deliver a sharp critique of the corrupt church and empire of his own time.Massimo Verdicchio’s canto-by-canto analysis focuses on the subversive undercurrents created by poetic allegory and irony and relates Dante’s ordering of the heavens to the Arts and Sciences of the Trivium and Quadrivium (the major subjects taught at medieval universities). This new reading highlights Dante’s use of language to expose the earthly flaws of the saints and denounce the illicit and destructive alliance between the House of Anjou and the church. The Poetics of Dante’s Paradiso is thought-provoking, tenacious, and sure to stimulate discussion amongst all students of the Commedia.
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