Vol. XXXIX No. 1 Winter 2021
Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor………………………………………………………………… v
Notes on Contributors………………………………………………………………. ix
Articles
From Drummer Boy to Missionary: Culture, Religion, and Identity in Antonio Andrea Arrighi’s The Story of Antonio, the Galley-Slave (1911)
Leonardo Buonomo…………………………………………………………… 1
Modern Machiavelli
Anthony Santaro…………………………………………………………….. 19
Embodying Italian-American Ethnicity in Frank Lentricchia’s The Music of the Inferno
Nanyi Zhou……………………………………………………………………. 29
Featured Poet: Donna Masini
Essay: “The Layers”………………………………………………………… 49
“Ants”…………………………………………………………………………….. 52
“That Fall”……………………………………………………………………….. 53
“Errands”…………………………………………………………………………. 55
Poetry
“SICILIANAS” by Suzanne Manizza Roszak………………………………………………….. 57
“Astonishment” by Nick DePascal……………………………………………………………….. 58
“Bad Blood” by Nick DePascal……………………………………………………………….. 59
“Sewing Box” by Robert Darken……………………………………………………………….. 60
“Father’s Day Prayer” by Dante Di Stefano……………………………………………………………. 62
“Remembering Venice” by Simona Carini……………………………………………………………….. 63
“The Sound of Violets by Centennial Bridge” by Carmine Giuseppe Di Biase……………………………………………… 64
“The Healthier Monkeys” by George Guida……………………………………………………………….. 65
“Naming a Child” by JoAnna Scandiffio………………………………………………………….. 66
“Morandi what he is not painting” by JoAnna Scandiffio………………………………………………………….. 67
“The Swans” by Leonore (Mirabile) Wilson……………………………………………….. 69
“What Bird Sings” by Leonore (Mirabile) Wilson……………………………………………….. 70
Fiction and CreatIve Non-Fiction
“The Melodeon” by Christine Palamidessi (Moore)………………………………………….. 73
“The Man We Would Have Called Nonno” by Christine Palamidessi (Moore) 77
Reviews
Review Essay: Scorsese and Dante: Art and the Afterlife
Martin Scorsese’s Divine Comedy: Movies and Religion by Catherine O’Brien
Review by Ilaria Serra…………………………………………………….. 85
Bridge of Love. A Story of Young Love, Immigration, Family, Hope by Christine Palamidessi
Review by Maria Galli Stampino……………………………………….. 88
Storia dell’Italia contemporanea, 1943–2019 by Umberto Gentiloni Silveri Review by Tiziano Bonazzi…………………………………………………………………………. 89
Dark Age Liguria. Regional Identity and Local Power, c. 400-1020 by Ross Balzaretti
Review by Andrea U. De Giorgi………………………………………… 92
Little Italy in the Great War: Philadelphia’s Italians on the Battlefield and Home Front by Richard N. Juliani
Review by Costantino Pischedda……………………………………….. 93
Italexit. Saggi su Risorgimento e disunione nazionale by Martino Marazzi Review by Claudio Staiti…………………………………………………………………………….. 95
Values, Virtues, and Vices, Italian Style: Caesar, Dante, Machiavelli, and Garibaldi by Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Review by Martha I. Pallante……………………………………………. 96
Ezra Pound, Italy, and The Cantos by Massimo Bacigalupo
Review by Manlio Della Marca…………………………………………. 98
Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Review by Maria Serena Marchesi……………………………………… 99
Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles by Diane Raptosh
Review by Floriana Guerriero………………………………………….. 101
The Harvest and the Lamp by Andrew Frisardi
Review by Andrea Ciribuco…………………………………………….. 102
The End of Aphrodite by Laurette Folk
Review by Roxanne Christofano Pilat……………………………….. 104
The Marble Faun: Art, Nature, and Morals Between Classicism and Aestheticism by Simone Turco
Review by Valerio Massimo De Angelis…………………………….. 106
Review Essay: Ghosts of the Belle Epoque: The History of the Grand Hôtel et des Palmes, Palermo by Andrew Edwards and Suzanne Edwards
Review by John Paul Russo…………………………………………….. 108
Letter from the Editor
Carla A. Simonini
Dear Readers:
As I sit to write this letter, I am amazed that we are about to bring the Winter 2021 issue to press, not only on time but featuring fine selections in all of our editorial categories. This was no small task given how much the COVID restrictions in effect on the campus of Loyola University Chicago have continued to present challenges to the journal’s operations. I am, therefore, very proud to present our readers with an exceptional array of scholarly articles, an exquisite selection of original poems, a wide range of book reviews, and most notably two nonfiction works from our own editor for fiction and creative nonfiction, Christine Palamidessi (Moore). In this issue, we are celebrating the publication of Christine’s latest book, Bridge of Love: a story of young love, immigration, family, hope (2020), which commemorates the 100-year anniversary of her grandparents’ courtship and eventual immigration to the United States. Christine has also recently donated her grandparents’ letters and other materials to the John Heinz History Center’s Italian American Collection in Pittsburgh, and she and her husband have established an endowment for Italian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Collectively, these gestures represent an act of love born from the desire to honor and preserve Italian-American history on a very personal level. We invite our readers to draw inspiration from the ways that Christine has chosen to celebrate her Italian ancestry, both in her creative life and her philanthropic actions.
This issue features a trio of scholarly articles, two of which explore Italian-American literature and the other examining the influence of a sixteenth century Italian philosopher and writer, Niccolò Machiavelli, on contemporary American and Italian-American cinema, Broadway, television, and video gaming. The latter article, written by Anthony Santaro, skillfully and somewhat unexpectedly connects Chazz Palminteri and Robert DeNiro’s A Bronx Tale with the Netflix series House of Cards and the video game Assassins Creed. The articles focusing on literature approach writers whose works were published on opposite ends of the twentieth century. Leonardo Buonomo’s work features Antonio Arrighi’s autobiography The Story of Antonio, the Galley-Slave (1911), perhaps the earliest Italian immigrant work to be published in English in the US. Nanyi Zhou’s article, meanwhile, focuses on Frank Lentricchia’s novel The Music of the Inferno, published in 1999. While Buonomo argues that Arrighi’s work represents a carefully constructed portrayal of his Italian self for the purpose of garnering the respect and acceptance of his assumed Anglo-American reader, Zhou analyzes the narrative strategies through which Lentricchia exposes how the ethnic pride expressed by later generation Italian Americans, especially those who have achieved a high level of social integration and economic success, can be vapid, self-serving, and potentially dangerous.
Questions of identity and the quest for the Italian ethnic self imbue the two selections by Christine Palamidessi (Moore), “The Melodeon” and “The Man We Would Have Called Nonno.” The man whose love letters Christine has donated to the Heinz Museum died before she ever got a chance to meet him, and while the young Christine is reminded by the rest of the family that Joe Frediani, her grandmother’s second husband, is not her “real” grandfather, she can’t help but be swept up by the strains of the Italian polkas he plays on the Melodeon. She remembers him as the ancestor that brought the family together, despite their not being bound by blood. In her second story she reconstructs her “real” grandfather’s story and illustrates how she is the inheritor of a legacy born of hard and dangerous work, shaped by the relationship between hunger and foodways, and forged through the ability to persevere in the face of the unexpected exigencies of life.
This issue’s featured poet, Donna Masini, meanwhile, explores her own relationship to her Italian-American identity through the metaphor of a lasagna, the distinct layers of flavors of which blend together into one delicious bite. While she notes that she writes less about her Catholic, working class, and Italian-American roots, she recognizes how they continue to inform her work. It is her soffritto, she writes, “my simmering base . . . and I am never out of the heat of it.” The poetry section includes three original poems by Donna Masini, and twelve other poems from nine different Italian-American poets. Due to the exceptionally high quality of the poems we received in this publication cycle, editor Maria Terrone elected to include more than one selection from some of our selected poets.
Finally, our Book Review section once again features a wide variety of works, including history, literary criticism, film studies, cultural analysis, poetry collections, and a review of Christine Palamidessi (Moore)’s aforementioned family saga Bridge of Love. Editor John Paul Russo has included books written in English as well as Italian and has drawn upon an international group of scholars and writers to contribute to the section.
In conclusion, my heartfelt thanks goes out to all the section editors for their continuing hard work and dedication: Maria Terrone, Christine Palamidessi (Moore), and John Paul Russo. Special thanks goes also to our editorial assistant extraordinaire Tom Slagle, without whose constant attention to and support for all the journal’s administrative needs, layout, and final proofing we would never have been able to bring the current issue to press.
Sincerely,
Carla A. Simonini Editor-in-chief