The Autobiography of a Language: Emanuel Carnevali's Italian/American Writing

Description

The Autobiography of a Language is an exploration of the deep and powerful ties between language and identity, focusing on an Italian American author and addressing global themes of modern writing. This is the first extensive, book-length work on Emanuel Carnevali (1897-1942), the first Italian American to attain literary recognition. It is a study on how an Italian immigrant to New York became an author and a key figure in transnational modernism. Most importantly, though, it's a study of contacts between American and Italian literatures in the modernist era, and an exploration of the challenges of writing in a second language. Carnevali's works are almost exclusively in English, even though he spent only eight years in the United States before returning to Italy. Combining literary analysis with some of the latest findings in applied linguistics and the study of bilingualism, this book contributes to a very active debate in the fields of comparative literature and translation studies: the implications of translingual writing. Andrea Ciribuco considers both the linguistic and cultural aspects of writing in a second language, examining its potential and pitfalls, and bringing Carnevali's works in touch with the sociocultural context of the great wave of Italian emigration. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Carnevali versus Modernity A Language for the Outsider A Journey Across Two Languages 1. Translating Childhood, Decoding America 1. Mother Tongues: Bilingualism and Emotion in Carnevali’s Autobiographical Writing 2. Leaving the Fatherland 3. The Immigrant and the Language of Modernity: Carnevali Arrives in New York 2. The Newcomer and the Splendid Commonplace: Using English as a Second Language 1. The Splendid Commonplace 2. “Because he was a foreigner”: Literary Style and Linguistic Assimilation 3. Italian Echoes: Between Multilingual Influences and Complete Assimilation 3. Representing Italy in America 1. Carnevali in Little Italy1 2. Carnevali and Dante: Tradition and the Individual Italian 3. “Something of Govoni in Frost”: Translating Italian Modernism 4. A Language for Bazzano: An Italian American Returns Home 1. Carnevali’s Godhead: Turning Mental Distress and Displacement into Literature 2. Return, Disappearance, and the Problem of the Audience 3. Priests, Podestà, and Proverbs 5. Between the Atlantic and Oblivion: and Oblivion: Carnevali in the 1930s 1. Carnevali, Pound, and the “eyetalian licherchoor” 2. Carnevali and the Cantos 3. From Italy to Italy: The Making of the Autobiography Conclusion: Emanuel Carnevali in the 21st Century Notes Bibliography Index