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Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (New Americanists) by Gardaphé, Fred L. is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (New Americanists) about?

In the first major critical reading of Italian American narrative literature in two decades, Fred L. Gardaphe presents an interpretive overview of Italian American literary history. Examining works from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, he develops a new perspective-variously historical, philosophical, and cultural-by which American writers of Italian descent can be read, increasing the discursive power of an ethnic literature that has received too little serious critical attention. <p>Gardaphe draws on Vico's concept of history, as well as the work of Gramsci, to establish a culture-specific approach to reading Italian American literature. He begins his historical reading with narratives informed by oral traditions, primarily autobiography and autobiographical fiction written by immigrants. From these earliest social-realist narratives, Gardaphe traces the evolution of this literature through tales of "the godfather" and the mafia; the "reinvention of ethnicity" in works by Helen Barolini, Tina DeRosa, and Carole Maso; the move beyond ethnicity in fiction by Don DeLillo and Gilbert Sorrentino; to the short fiction of Mary Caponegro, which points to a new direction

Author

Gardaphé, Fred L.

Publisher

Duke University Press Books

Published

1996

Language

EN

ISBN

9780822317395

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Memoir, History