Synopses & Reviews
Gary P. Cestaro's
Queer Italia includes essays on Italian literature and film, medieval to modern, and attempts to define a queer tradition in Italian culture. Contributors explore the multiform dynamics of sexuality in Italian texts and aim not to promote the mistaken notion of a single homosexuality through history; rather, they upset and undo the equally misguided assumption of an omnipresent heterosexuality by uncovering the complexities of desire in texts from all periods. Somewhat paradoxically, a kind of queer canon results. These essays open a much-needed critical space in the Italian tradition wherein fixed definitions of sexual identity collapse.
Queer Italia will be of interest to a wide audience of Italianists, medieval to modern, and queer cultural theorists.
Synopsis
Queer Italia gathers essays on Italian literature and film, medieval to modern. The volume's chronological organization reflects its intention to define a queer tradition in Italian culture. While fully cognizant of the theoretical risks inherent in trans-historicizing sexuality, the contributors to this volume share an interest in probing the multi-form dynamics of sexual desires in Italian texts through the centuries. The volume aims not to promote the mistaken notion of a single homosexuality through history. Rather, these essays together upset and undo the equally misguided assumption of an omnipresent heterosexuality through time by uncovering the various, complex workings of desire in texts from all periods. Somewhat paradoxically, a kind of queer canon results. These essays open a much-needed critical space in the Italian tradition wherein fixed definitions of sexual identity collapse. Queer Italia is the first and only work of its kind in Italian criticism. As such, it will be of interest to a wide audience of Italianists, medieval to modern, and queer cultural theorists.
About the Author
Gary P. Cestaro is Associate Professor of Italian language and literature at DePaul University in Chicago.
Table of Contents
Introduction x "The Dead Sea of Sodomy": Giordano da Pisa on Men Who Have Sex with Men--Bernard Schlager x Men on Bottom: Homoeroticism in Cecco Angiolieri--Fabian Alfie x "To an Athlete Dying Young": Nanni Pegolotti's Lament for Andrea Ferrantini--Steven Botterill x Bibbiena's Closet: The Elusive Sexual Politics of the Papal Court of Leo X--Michael Wyatt x "Is Benvenuto Cellini Queer?"--Margaret A. Gallucci x "Knots of Desire": Female Homoeroticism in Orlando furioso XXV--Mary-Michelle DeCoste x Tra(ns)vestying Gender and Genre in Flaminio Scala's Il (Finto) Marito--Rosalind Kerr x "La natura e madre dolcissima": Homosexuality and Italian Libertinism in the 16th and 17th Centuries--Giovanni Dall'Orto x The Gendering of Leopardi and the Feminine Sublime--Margaret Brose x Beauty and the Beast: Lesbian Representation at the Turn of the Century--Daniela Danna x Cavani's Closet: Desire and Disavowal in the "German Trilogy"--Aine O'Healy x Adapting to Heterocentricity: The Film Versions of Umberto Saba's Ernestoand Giorgio Bassani's The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles--William Van Watson x The Other Literature: Homoeroticism and Narrative Codes in Italian Fiction--Sergio Parussa x The Space of Transgression: The Boundaries of Masculinity in the Post-War Novel--Derek Duncan x Queer Politics, Queer Fiction: De-Gendering the Subject in Mieli and Pescatori--Marco Pustianaz x Il bacio della Medusa: Towards the Definition of a Feminist Discursive Space--Rebecca Anne Wright x Conclusion