Italian identities are of many kinds: national, regional, diasporic,
historical, linguistic, personal, literary. The term can cover both
identities that are intimately bound up with the idea of Italy and those
which are simply the individual identities of people, places and things,
both within Italy and in transnational Italian communities. This book
brings together many notions and manifestations of Italian identity in
order to display the wide variety of forms that Italian identities might
take and how they interrelate, and attempts to identify just what an
Italian identity might be.
In their diversity of form, this volume sets out to show how these
identities range from a linguistic identity created by a great author,
Dante Alighieri, and how translation of his Commedia can be approached
in a new hybridised way through to its analysis in a literary context
that also takes note of digital technologies and other pressing social
questions of our time, through to material-discursive explorations of
environment issues and discussion of personal identities linked to
gender and sexuality. The question of identity and belonging is also
explored through the lens of an 'accidental' Italian identity formulated
by colonial overlords and utilised strategically by Greek migrants from
the Dodecanese travelling to Australia. Lastly, the collection explores
notions of regional identity within the broader Italian nation state,
with a particular focus on Sicily.
Italian identity is thus revealed as a multifaceted and multivalent
notion touching on many aspects of Italian history, culture and society,
and articulated comprehensively through Italy's rich literary tradition,
emerging issues in environment studies and the reconfiguration of
identity and sense of community arising from migration in a
transnational context.
