RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF ITALIAN ANTISEMITISM: UNMASKING ANTI - JEWISH NARRATIVES IN POST-RISORGIMENTO FICTIONAL AND EPISTOLARY LITERATURE
Public Deposited- Creator
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Goetzl, Ugo
- College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Romance Studies
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Goetzl, Ugo
- Abstract
- Italian antisemitism, particularly visualized through the lens of literary antisemitism, provides valuable insights into the nature of this hateful prejudice. The depth of antisemitism within the Italian population is controversial. Its perceived presence ranges from non-existent to ingrained in societal norms. This dissertation examines the anti-Jewish rhetoric from a literary perspective, specifically that which occurs in non-ideological writings of renowned modern non-Jewish Italian authors. Six authors, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Maggiore, Emilio Cecchi, and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa were identified by a reading of their writings and/or by scholarly references to antisemitic articulations by these writers. All these writers were active at the turn of the twentieth century, and all had published one book in which Jews were not depicted for explicit antisemitic intent or political propaganda. In addition to an in-depth analysis of anti-Jewish expressions within specific texts, this dissertation compares their antisemitic rhetoric with philosemitic expressions of other non-Jewish authors and with Jewish tropes expressed by Italian Jewish authors. Highlighted are key stereotypic themes, disparaging words such as ebreaccio, ebreuccio, and juiffonsky, and antisemitic tropes of cane giudeo, foetor judaiicus, il naso adunco, i bancieri ebrei, I milionari ebrei internazionali and l’infiltrazione ebrea.The labelling of Italians as “Italiani brava gente” is a malapropism. This study shows that antisemitism was significantly present, not only as deduced from the complicity of the general Italian populace with the Fascist and later Nazi regimes as argued during the past several decades, but also in the rhetoric of well-known and highly respective Italian non-Jewish writers. Because of their wide current readership, the antisemitic rhetoric articulated within their writings could contribute to the continued promulgation of anti-Jewish sentiments today.
- Date of publication
- 2022
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
- Advisor
- Iovino, Serenella
- Ziolkowski, Saskia
- Fritz-Morkin, Maggie
- Ariel, Yaakov
- Sueldo, Martin A.
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2022
- Language
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