About FDU Press

Unlike many collections of scholarly essays, this one is both thematically coherent and consistently interesting. Acknowledging the growing interest in “the image of the city” and the “image of women” within the study of Italian literature and film, Smarr (Univ. of California, San Diego) and Valentini (Stonehill College) have compiled a wide-ranging volume that brings two topics into though-provoking juxtaposition. Eleven contributors skillfully cover topics as varied as Renaissance poetry and theater ) Fonte, d’Aragona, Stampa, Franco, Nardi Guarini), cinema (Visconti’s Senso), and fiction (Bellonci, Bianchini, Cutrufelli, Morandini, Rea, Cialente, Pavese, and Ortese, among others), and cities as diverse as Florence, Rome, Venice, Naples, and Trento. Only the decision to fix the collection’s chronological starting point at the Renaissance puzzles: surely both cities and women were vibrant presences in Italian culture as early as the 1200s. But overall this is a stimulating and readable volume that will greatly interest those interested in Italian literature, film, history, and urban studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through faculty.