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Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History
Neorealism emerged as a cultural exchange and a field of discourse that served to shift the confines of creativity and revise the terms of artistic expression not only in Italy but worldwide. If neorealism was thus a global phenomenon, it is because of its revolutionary portrayal of a transformative moment in the local, regional, and national histories of Italy. At once guiding and guided by that transformative moment, neorealist texts took up, reflected, and performed the contentious conditions of their creation, not just at the level of narrative content but also in their form, language, and structure. Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History demonstrates how they did so through a series of representative case studies. Recounting the history of a generation of artists, this study offers fundamental insights into one of the most innovative and influential cultural moments of the twentieth century.
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Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History
Neorealism emerged as a cultural exchange and a field of discourse that served to shift the confines of creativity and revise the terms of artistic expression not only in Italy but worldwide. If neorealism was thus a global phenomenon, it is because of its revolutionary portrayal of a transformative moment in the local, regional, and national histories of Italy. At once guiding and guided by that transformative moment, neorealist texts took up, reflected, and performed the contentious conditions of their creation, not just at the level of narrative content but also in their form, language, and structure. Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History demonstrates how they did so through a series of representative case studies. Recounting the history of a generation of artists, this study offers fundamental insights into one of the most innovative and influential cultural moments of the twentieth century.
Neorealism emerged as a cultural exchange and a field of discourse that served to shift the confines of creativity and revise the terms of artistic expression not only in Italy but worldwide. If neorealism was thus a global phenomenon, it is because of its revolutionary portrayal of a transformative moment in the local, regional, and national histories of Italy. At once guiding and guided by that transformative moment, neorealist texts took up, reflected, and performed the contentious conditions of their creation, not just at the level of narrative content but also in their form, language, and structure. Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History demonstrates how they did so through a series of representative case studies. Recounting the history of a generation of artists, this study offers fundamental insights into one of the most innovative and influential cultural moments of the twentieth century.
Charles L. Leavitt IV is an assistant professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. What Was Neorealism? 2. Renewal through Conservation: Neorealism after Fascism 3. Chronicle and Tragedy: The Neorealist Representation of History 4. From I to We: Neorealism’s Choral Politics
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
What People are Saying About This
David Ward
"The range and depth of the sources Charles L. Leavitt IV draws on is testimony to the hard work and fine scholarship that has produced this study. I can think of no scholar outside Italy who can draw on such an encyclopedic knowledge of the intricacies of Italian cultural and political debate in the latter half of the 1940s. And he puts it all to very good use."
Luca Barattoni
"Charles L. Leavitt IV demonstrates total mastery of the immense literature on the subject of Italian Neorealism, both from the times when the phenomenon took shape and from contemporary sources."
Robert S.C. Gordon
"Impeccably researched and deeply illuminating, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History probes the networks, the histories, the ethics, and the aesthetics that made neorealism such a vibrant and also contradictory — indeed, vibrant because it was contradictory — cultural moment. Offering a bracing corrective to tired attempts that tie neorealism to dogma and definition, Leavitt proposes instead a compelling model of neorealism as an extended 'cultural conversation,' drawing on examples from film, novels, poetry, drama, essays, art, and architecture. In the process he captures neorealism's variety of voice and its quite exceptional contribution to the culture of Europe's 'postwar.'"
Giorgio Bertellini
"In this superbly researched study, Charles L. Leavitt IV historicizes the canonization of 'neorealismo' by identifying the term's earlier references to interwar modernist literature, Soviet cinema, and European artistic practices. Italian Neorealism is a triumph of cultural archeology and critical clarity."
