Orality and Literacy in Modern Italian Culture

Michael Caesar

• Introduction Part I: Orality, Literacy and Performance 1. Voice, Vision and Orality: Notes on Reading Adriana Cavarero 2. Histrionic Transgressions: The Dario Fo—Commedia dell'Arte Relationship Revisited 3. Le poetiche del 'teatro narrazione' fra 'scrittura oralizzante' e oralità-che-si-fa-testo 4. Composing, Reciting, Inscribing and Transcribing Playtexts in the Community Theatre of Monticchiello 5. An Oral Renarration of a Photoromance, 1960 6. Identità locali e giochi popolari in Italia tra oralità e scrittura Part II: Writing Orality 7. The Facets of Italian Orality: An Overview of the Recent Debate 8. Literature and Youth in the 1990s: Orality and the Written in Tiziano Scarpa's Cos'è questo fracasso? and Caliceti and Mozzi's Quello che ho da dirvi 9. Note su oralità e narrazione inattendibile 10. Voice and Events in Manlio Calegari's Comunisti e Partigiani: Genova 1942–1945 11. Oralità o stile? La trasmissione orale e le modalità narrative ne La Storia di Elsa Morante 12. Orality, Microhistory and Memory: Gesualdo Bufalino and Claudio Magris between Narrative and History

Other strands link the twelve essays: one centres on the idea that 'voice' is something vulnerable and short-lived, while another focuses on the 'hierarchy' implicit in the relationship between orality and literacy. Both are demonstrated, for instance, when 'folk', 'women's' and 'youth' cultures are 'textualised' and thus potentially destroyed, rather than preserved, in writing, leading to the hypothesis that 'orality' is, essentially, irreproducible as 'literacy'. -- Forum for Modern Language Studies Forum for Modern Language Studies