New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and after Auschwitz(Italian and Italian American Studies)

This book presents a baker's dozen of interpretative keys to Levi's output and thought.  It deepens our understanding of common themes in Levi studies (memory and witness) while exploring unusual and revealing byways (Levi and Calvino, or Levi and theater, for example).

Table of Contents:
Introduction PART I: POLITICS, NATIONALISM AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY Primo Levi's Politics: Giustizia e libertà, the Partito d'azione and 'Jewish' Antifascism (Stanislao Pugliese) The Itinerary of an Identity: Primo Levi's 'Parallel Nationalization' (Nancy Harrowitz) Primo Levi and Holocaust Memory in Italy, 1958-1963 (Robert Gordon) PART II: UNBEARABLE WITNESS Trauma and Latency in Primo Levi's The Reawakening (Jonathan Druker) The Witness's Tape Recorder and the Violence of Mediation (Lina Insana) The Strange Case of the Muselmänner in Auschwitz (Joseph Farrell) PART III: STRATEGIES OF COMMUNICATION AND REPRESENTATION Primo Levi and Italo Calvino: Two Parallel Literary Lives (Marina Beer) 'L'immagine di lui che ho conservato': Communication and Memory in Lilít' (Elizabeth Scheiber) The Survivor as Author: Primo Levi's Literary Vision of Auschwitz (Lawrence Langer) PART IV: AUTHORSHIP AND FASHIONING THE TEXT Appreciating Primo Levi: How It All Started (Nicholas Patruno) Levi's Western: 'Professional Plot' and History in If Not Now, When? (Mirna Cicioni) Mind the Gap: Performance and Semiosis in Primo Levi (Ellen Nerenberg) Works Cited Index

About the Author :
RISA SODI is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lector in Italian Language and Literature at Yale University, USA.   MILLICENT MARCUS is Professor of Italian at Yale University, USA.

Review :
"Critical study of Levi has surged recently, and this is a fine addition to that literature. Sodi and Marcus (both, Italian, Yale) have assembled an international group of prominent and emerging scholars of Italian, Holocaust, and Levi literary studies. The primary obstacles to early dissemination of Levi's Survival in Auschwitz were the belief, on the part of leading publishers, that the Holocaust could not be assimilated into conventional literary genre studies and the early postwar repression of Italian Holocaust history to pursue the anti-Fascist narrative. Levi is credited with the eventual Italian escalation of interest in Holocaust literary production and scholarship. Among the collection's best essays are those that treat Levi's politics and involvement in anti-Fascist groups; his predeportation identity based on a theory of "parallel nationalization," whereby Italianization was privileged over Jewish identity; and shifting Italian Holocaust memory from 1958 (with the republication of Survival in Auschwitz) to 1963 (publication of The Reawakening) and its subsequent decline. Other essays explore Freudian trauma theory in The Reawakening, Levi and Italo Calvino, literariness of the Survival in Auschwitz canto section, and Levi's attitude toward Muselmänner. One essay provides a questionable reading of If Not Now, When? through the lens of the American Westernfilm genre." - Choice "It is usually said that the life of a writer is a life of the mind. Primo Levi is an exception: he wrote his masterpieces because he was acquainted with grief. The essays in this volume grasp this essential trait of his writings and acknowledge that they cannot be simply classified as contributions to the intellectual history of recent times. With extraordinary precision, all of them, together, open the door to the moral center of the writer's lived experience, to his unique art, and to the most profound oftragedies of the twentieth century." - Giuseppe Mazzotta, Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian, Yale University, and author of Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge "In their diverse ways, these essays testify to what by now should be irrefutably clear: Primo Levi was one of the most important writers of the past half-century. The brilliance of his achievement is clarified in the critical studies of this learned and engaging book." - Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Indiana University and author of A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature and The End of the Holocaust "An indispensable, wide-ranging collection of essays on a great writer and memorialist. Contributors analyze in depth not only his literary legacy but also his belated recognition as a world-class author, his relation to the Italian Jewish community, and Italy's 'cultural reticence' in dealingwith the Holocaust." - Geoffrey Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, Yale University, author of The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust