ABSTRACT Italian historiographers of the second half of the seventeenth century often establish parallels between early modern republics, comparing Genoa and Venice with the United Provinces, considered as similar political entities despite their evident political differences. The article, taking into account four different sources, investigates the meaning of those comparisons, published when the absolutist model was taking root all around Europe. In the twilight of the republican state, when the power and reputation of the Italian republics was maybe (...) at its weakest, those comparisons served both as a way to boost a supranational republican identity, and to question the strength of the classical republican constitution. This survey explores how these authors claim that, in order to survive in the Europe of absolute monarchies, those republics have to undergo a radical political change. Only by avoiding splitting the sovereignty among too many subjects, and reinforcing the monarchical element in their constitution, these republican states, no more based on the principle of equality, could compete in the new seventeenth-century political scenario. For this reason, Italian authors looked with great interest, and often celebrated the Dutch republic, considered a stronger government than that of Venice, even if it was regarded as an imperfect republic. (shrink)

When Giambattista Vico wrote and rewrote the Scienza Nuova between 1725 and 1744, he all but completely occluded his own discipline – rhetoric. Professor of Latin Eloquence at the University of Nap...

In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new (...) research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries, and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish. (shrink)

This book provides the first English study of five prominent Italian Renaissance utopias: Doni’s Wise and Crazy World, Patrizi’s The Happy City, and Zuccolo’s The Republic of Utopia, The Republic of Evandria, and The Happy City. The scholarship on Italian Renaissance utopias is still relatively underdeveloped; there is no English translation of these texts, and our understanding of the distinctive features of this utopian tradition is rather limited. This book therefore fills an important gap in the existing critical (...) literature, providing easier access to these utopian texts, and showing how the study of the utopias of Doni, Patrizi, and Zuccolo can shed crucial light on the scholarly debate about the essential traits of Renaissance utopias. (shrink)

Italian Sounding—i. e., the Italian appearance of a product or service brand irrespective of its country of origin—represents a global market phenomenon affecting a wide range of economic sectors, particularly the agro-food sector. Although its economic impact has been repeatedly stressed from different points of view, systematic scientific knowledge regarding its social–psychological bases is lacking. Three studies carried out in three different countries address this literature gap. Different consumer groups are targeted regarding major product categories pre-selected categories, (...) which are the major Italian food goods within the specific country according to piloting. In each study, the main independent variable has been manipulated by presenting real product images, whose “Italianness” degree is effectively manipulated by the main study variable across three or four levels. Main hypotheses are tested via a survey with the specific product images administered to samples in Italy, China, and the USA. Across the three studies, results show that Made in Italy products, compared to the other ones, are advantaged in terms of the main dependent variables: reputation profile, general reputation, attitude, and willingness to pay. Moreover, Italian Sounding products are endowed with corresponding significant advantages when compared to the Generic Foreign by non-Italian samples. Results reveal the specific social–psychological profile of Italian Sounding products in terms of either weaknesses or strengths when compared to both Made in Italy products and Generic Foreign ones, differently in the eyes of Italian and non-Italian consumers across different countries. Finally, consistently across the three studies, the extent to which a food product is perceived to be Italian increases consumers' WTP for that product, and this effect is consistently mediated by the product's reputation. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between Italian teachers’ well-being, socio-demographic characteristics and professional background. Using data from the 2015 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) we considered information collected by the questionnaire completed by a total of 6,491 teachers in the sampled schools. Moving from existing literature on teachers’ well-being, we investigate several aspects related to the teachers’ working environment, career motivation and investment, and job satisfaction. We assess the variability in the observed (...) outcomes attributable to school factors and heterogeneity between disciplines. Measurement models are combined in a multilevel setting in order to define teachers’ well-being on a broad perspective while accounting for the multiple sources of heterogeneity due to several factors (e.g., discipline, teacher professional background, and individual differences) occurring at different levels of the data structure. In general, results show that the teachers’ positive perception of the working environment in terms of availability of adequate human and physical resources, and professional development opportunities, provide a substantial state of well-being at work, and are related to teachers’ job satisfaction. Moreover, results highlight the key role of transformational leadership in defining a teacher’s well-being. Findings and implications are discussed. (shrink)

This book explores the different ways in which psychoanalysis has been connected to various fields of Italian culture, such as literary criticism, philosophy ...

This paper analyses the attitudes of different genders and age groups toward Italian food in Korea. By asking who consumes it, and with whom, how, when, and why, this paper examines the cross-cultural meaning of Italian food and how it is differently perceived by men and women of different ages in Korea. It argues that Italian food is perceived by consumers as sharing female traits and that this, in turn, lends a particular eating experience.

Language, vernacular and philosophy -- Sperone Speroni between language and logic -- Benedetto Varchi and the idea of a vernacular logic (1540) -- Antonio Tridapale and the first vernacular logic (1547) -- Nicolo Massa's logic for natural philosophy (1549) -- Alessandro Piccolomini's instrument of philosophy (1551).

The first study of the rebirth of ancient sophists in Speroni (1500-1588) and the early-modern Italian literature, from Leonardo Bruni to Jacopo Mazzoni.

Published just after the Second World War, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a sweeping exploration of the remarkable continuity of European literature across time and place, from the classical era up to the early nineteenth century, and from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. In what T. S. Eliot called a "magnificent" book, Ernst Robert Curtius establishes medieval Latin literature as the vital transition between the literature of antiquity and the vernacular (...) literatures of later centuries. The result is nothing less than a masterful synthesis of European literature from Homer to Goethe. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a monumental work of literary scholarship. In a new introduction, Colin Burrow provides critical insights into Curtius's life and ideas and highlights the distinctive importance of this wonderful book. (shrink)

Outdoor Education (OE) refers to organized experiential education that takes place in the outdoor, characterized by action-centered and thematic learning processes. Literature shows how OE may have beneficial effects on different areas of child development, including cognitive abilities, social skills and motor development. This relationship is not necessarily linear, but moderated by different variables. Until now, few studies have examined, using rigorous methods, the role of OE in children’s development and studies of preschool aged children remain lacking. The current (...) study aimed to explore teachers’ perceptions of children’s developmental trajectories over 2 school years, investigating whether teachers’ perceptions differed between two kindergartens, one characterized by a consolidated OE approach and the other one characterized by a more traditional method of education. The sample was composed of 20 teachers, evaluating 93 children aged 3-5 (M= 46.95 months, SD= 6.73; 42 males): 13 teachers were from a traditional kindergarten (Traditional Group- TG) and evaluated 52 children; 7 teachers were from an OE kindergarten (Outdoor Group – OE) and observed 41 children. All the teachers completed the Kuno Beller Developmental Tables (Beller, 1995), in order to describe specific child developmental areas in 4 consecutive moments during 2 school years (T1-T2: January-May 2014; T3-T4: October 2014-May 2015). The 20 teachers also completed the “Outdoor Activities/Trips Diary”, an instrument created for this study to collect qualitative data on the characteristics of outdoor activities. Results showed that, in all the developmental areas, OE teachers perceived higher scores over time were found for the Outdoor Group compared to the Traditional one. Specifically, GLM ANOVAs Repeated Measures revealed a significant interaction of the 2 variables Time and Groups (p<0.001): contrast analyses showed that OE children, compared to the TG children, were perceived by their teachers with higher levels in all developmental areas at T1 and T2, but not at T3 and T4. The findings suggest that the OE activites, compared to indoor ones and according to teachers' perceptions, offer greater opportunities to promote the child’s development at different levels. especially when children are younger. Future studies are recommended analyzing possible moderating variables and long term effects of OE. (shrink)

At the beginning of the xxth century the high rate of analphabetism and the recent unification of the country, achieved only in 1870, had required a vast program of school and university reforms which were accompanied by a debate on two fundamental questions: whether the university should depend on public funds or become autonomous, and whether the curriculum should be specialized or remain general as in the modern era. The 1859 Casati reform had separated the faculty for literature and (...) philosophy from the faculty for mathematical, physical and natural sciences, thus introducing for the first time specialized curricula. (shrink)

Cimatti and Salzani have put together a rich collection of essays on animal studies that provides an exhaustive overview of how Italian contemporary philosophers are engaging with animal ethics, antispeciesism, posthumanism, ecofeminism, and biopolitics. This edited volume represents an important development in the “animal turn” in the humanities, particularly because it is published in English, allowing for a more efficient dialogue between “Italian theory” and philosophers around the world. This is, in fact, the first collection that will give (...) an international audience access to the rich and varied contribution of Italian contemporary philosophy in the burgeoning field of animal studies. It is also important to point out that all the authors—who are either well-established erudite thinkers or bright and innovative new voices in the panorama of Italian philosophy—effectively engage with recent and prominent scholarship in the fields of animal studies, posthumanism, and biopolitics, such as the work of Zizek, Esposito, Hardt, Calarco, Braidotti, and Wolfe.The volume is clearly intended for an academic audience: professors, scholars, and graduate students studying not only philosophy, Italian studies, environmental humanities, and animal ethics, but also political science, ethology, comparative literature, art history, and religious studies. In addition, the book could also find an audience in animal rights and environmental activists who are interested in the philosophical aspects and ethical and political implications of their actions.The division of the book into three sections (“Animality in the Italian Tradition,” “Animality in Perspective,” and “Fragments of a Contemporary Debate”) provides the reader a clear trajectory from the Italian philosophical tradition to the current debate on “animality.” In the first section, in fact, the authors engage with the rich and complex tradition of both Italian animal philosophy and advocacy. In the three essays that make up this section, the authors provide a compelling historical perspective of the anti-Cartesian and antidualistic aspects of Italian thought, tracing its pre-Cartesian origin and post-Cartesian developments through the work of Francis of Assisi, Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Giacomo Leopardi, among others. This section also includes essays outlining the development of animal bioethics in Italy, which emerged from the work of animal advocacy pioneer Aldo Capitini and continued to have an important impact on Italian culture thanks to the antispeciesist movement and debate, of which the third essay of this section provides an exhaustive intellectual history.The second section of the volume, comprised of six essays, provides an overall view of the ongoing philosophical debate on animality that traverses Italian posthumanism, feminism, theology, biopolitics, environmental ethics, and Marxist thought. Here the authors engage with some of the prominent voices in the contemporary Italian philosophical landscape, such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Roberto Marchesini, Antonio Negri, Maria Turchetto, Adriana Caravero, Luisa Muraro, and Paolo De Benedetti. As pointed out by the editors in their introduction, this section does not intend to offer a complete account of the extensive and heterogenous exchanges occurring inside the Italian biological turn, but instead aims at investigating its most compelling approaches and effectively links them to the ongoing transnational debate.The rich historiography and analysis of the first two sections is complemented, in the third section of the volume, by the speculative approach that strongly characterizes all five final essays. Here we can find some of the most exciting and original developments in Italian scholarship on animal philosophy. This section is, therefore, the most effective in presenting the distinctive approach of contemporary Italian philosophers in rethinking animality and the human-animal interplay, in particular inside the historical and epistemological frame of the Anthropocene. For instance, Massimo Filippi explores how slaughterhouses have become exemplary spaces to investigate the calculation that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides humans and animals, which removes animality and excises the other, which forcefully bans any imagining of the monstrously other, of the other-than-human, and that produces, among others and besides It-Self, the Woman, the Homosexual, the Abnormal, the Migrant, the Criminal, and the Animal. (p. 225)Structuring his argument on the real and metaphorical “mathematics of sacrifice” at work in the slaughterhouse (p. 226), Filippi engages with the processes that enable human ontological privilege, with intraspecific and interspecific mechanisms of discrimination, and with philosophical, political, and ethical implications of meat production.For a second and final example, ethologist Roberto Marchesini—one of the most original and prominent voices in animal studies—focuses on redefining the paradigm of “animality.” In his essay, Marchesini questions behaviorism and the automatism of learning, key aspects that have been prominent in defining animality in many fields, from biology to philosophy. Building from his groundbreaking and extensive work in ethology and zooanthropology, he argues for an “elaborative model” of animality (animal as subject) against the fallacy of the “automatism-based model” (animal as mechanism): Subjectivity is the implicit condition of the animal being, an expressive dimension that may also be unconscious but that precedes from (i) a constructivist conception of behavior, which we could explain by considering it a work in progress, always open and never predetermined, but equally never imposed and nonetheless always co-factorial to external contributions, and (ii) a propositional view of the individual, or rather from being supported by verbal structures such as to delight, to fear, to want, which join themselves to modal predicates declined according to context, but which likewise render the individual the protagonist. (p. 247)Animal studies has established itself as one of the most exciting areas of research inside the biological turn of the humanities worldwide and, by collecting such a large number of compelling and provocative theories from Italian contemporary philosophy, the impact of Cimatti and Salzani's volume will be twofold: It will enrich and expand a developing discussion in the environmental humanities and in animal studies while establishing the centrality of Italian thought in such an important and, in the Anthropocene era, necessary debate. (shrink)

The paper challenges the fashionable interpretation of Machiavelli as an idealistic champion of liberty and self-governance, and tries to demonstrate -- through textual analysis -- that the ideology of Italian fascism is permeated by Machiavellian themes and principles. Although this convergence is generally ignored in the scholarly literature on fascism and was rarely acknowledged by Mussolini or Gentile themselves, it is evident in their hostility to metaphysical abstractions, their contempt for the idea of moral progress, their indifference to (...) conventional moral pieties, their reduction of politics to underlying power struggles, their view of the patria as the foundation of existence, and their desire to rescue Italy from its present enfeeblement by recreating the glories of the Roman past. Machiavelli, often depicted as an essentially left-wing figure, can be seen as a precursor of fascism. (shrink)

Working as a peacekeeper is associated with the exposure to acute and/or catastrophic events and chronic stressors. Hence, the meager literature about peacekeepers’ wellbeing has mainly analyzed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This study aims to deep the analysis of the wellbeing of peacekeepers military. Based on the few studies on this population, we hypothesized that Italian peacekeeper military officers and enlisted men (n = 167; 103 males, 6 females, 58 missing) exhibit lower levels of internalizing symptoms (i.e., PTSD, (...) depression, general anxiety, obsessions, and somatization) as compared to a control group (n = 60; 32 males, 28 females). Moreover, we hypothesized that peacekeepers have higher levels of psychological resources (i.e., self-efficacy, self-esteem, social support) and quality of life (i.e., higher life satisfaction and lower general stress). We compared the groups by means of MANOVAs on the subscales of the Psychological Treatment Inventory (PTI; Gori et al., 2015). We found that Italian peacekeepers have lower internalizing symptoms and higher levels of self-efficacy and self-esteem than the control group; however, no statistically significant differences were observed on perceived social support. Finally, peacekeepers have a higher quality of life: scores reflect higher life satisfaction and lower distress than the control group. This study is in line with previous literature supporting the claim that Italian peacekeeper military officers have sufficient psychological resources for coping with the stressful situations implied in peacekeeping missions. Future studies should deepen the analysis of the military’s psychological characteristics by comparing war veterans and peacekeeper military. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s LegacyPaul Richard BlumChristopher S. Celenza. The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 210. Cloth, $45.00This is a programmatic book about why and how philosophy should care about Renaissance texts. Celenza starts with an assessment of the neglect of the wealth of Latin Renaissance [End Page 485] (...) sources by nineteenth-century historiography, followed by portraits of two prototypal twentieth-century historians and their philosophical approach. He proposes a method of study for Renaissance thinkers and exemplifies it with two key figures and with the concept of honor. A survey of the field of study and an appendix concerning Renaissance research in the US conclude the book."The Renaissance" as a field of research between the Middle Ages and what is now cowardly called "Early Modern" became legitimate through the awakening of national consciousness in the nineteenth century. Consequently, the emphasis lay on vernacular language works in Italy and elsewhere. Latin Renaissance literature never was worthy of Grossforschung, i.e., of national projects like the academy enterprises concerning world history or classical studies, even though classical philology originated in the humanists' emulation of the ancients. This however would be absorbed by the nineteenth-century idea of national character (12).Italian Hegelianism of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century included Renaissance philosophy in the evolution of national spirit, and the late Eugenio Garin as its pupil spent his scholarly life portraying with astounding precision and detail Italian Humanism and Renaissance as a dialectic and rational development. Equally diligent was the German born Paul Oskar Kristeller, clinging, however, to a very different understanding of philosophy, which Celenza describes as rationalist in the Kantian and metaphysical in the Platonico-Aristotelian tradition (41). Here the author underestimates the influence of Heidegger on Kristeller: his dissertation was clearly an interpretation of Plotinus in the light of existentialism, which still transpires in his famous Ficino book and many later philosophical statements. The problem with both approaches, that of Garin and that of Kristeller, is that those philosophers who ignore history (deliberately or incidentally) and those who lost an understanding of metaphysics do not know how to read Renaissance thinkers.'Microhistory' is the formula Celenza proposes: Richard Rorty's abolishing the notion of 'representing' reality in favor of evocation and conversation—both for the interpretation of the past and the past itself—and Pierre Bourdieux's notions of 'field' and 'relational thinking' open the possibility of locating past thinkers in their community and, consequently, the meaning of their philosophical endeavor. What Celenza exercised with Garin and Kristeller applies also to Renaissance authors. Under the heading 'Orthodoxy,' Celenza shows that it is unfortunate to censure Lorenzo Valla (+ 1457) or Marsilio Ficino (+ 1499) as being unorthodox or as precursors to the Reformation, because this perspective misses the point of their lives' work—namely, to find out what makes Christian beliefs and their sources Christian. Valla's discoveries in Greek and Latin philology and Ficino's experiments with magic are part of their scrutiny of orthopraxy (my term), the right way of Christian life, and are embedded in their conversations with friend and foe, who in some cases still await discovery. The far-reaching message of these two samples is: reading their work and studying their conversations is the way to study philosophy in the fifteenth century.The same is proven by engaging in social concepts such as 'honor.' Starting with a surprising appreciation of gender studies, Celenza suggests taking a look at intellectual masculinity among courtiers and writers. Then it turns out that Machiavelli bequeathed to modernity—perhaps as a caricature—the structure of struggle for power, ideas, and provision in which humanists were engaged, being the first large generation of intellectuals outside the safe haven of cathedrals and convents."What is really there?" is the concluding question. A new canon, the prelude to early modern sociology of scholarship, and models of—presently highly acclaimed—contextualization of intellectual productivity. Returning to the Latinity of Renaissance sources Celenza shows that even the emergence of vernacular literature, which bewitched nationalist historiography, was by itself a fruit... (shrink)

This essay examines the sanitary policies for the protection of overseas communities that Italian fascism employed during the empire. From 1935–1936, the vast scale of the Ethiopian campaign, as well as intensive colonisation programmes, gave new political visibility to the issue of safeguarding Italian settlers from the risks of the tropical climate. In this period, the problem of how Italians could adapt to overseas environments moved beyond the boundaries of scientific discussion to become a major concern of colonial (...) rule. Analysing both the medical literature and archival sources, this essay examines the concepts and practices that underpinned the fascist project for the “reclamation” of the empire: from the intensification of hygienic propaganda, to the redefinition of the medical-geographical boundaries of tropical risk, and to the expansion of social security benefits, which were extended to harms caused by tropical diseases. Finally, it investigates how the notion of acclimatisation was transformed within the context of the regime's imperial ideology, showing how the conception of the tropics as a pathogenic space remained widespread, fuelled by the regime's organicistic vision and its concerns for upholding the racial prestige of Italians in the colony. (shrink)

We know from the literature in theoretical linguistics that interrogative constructions in Italian have particular syntactic properties, due to the liberal word order and the rich inflectional system. In this paper we show that the calculus of pregroups represents a flexible and efficient computational device for the analysis and derivation of Italian sentences and questions. In this context the distinction between direct vs. indirect statements and questions is explored.