Neorealism and the "New" Italy centers on neorealist Italian artists' use of compassion as a vehicle to express their characters' interactions. Simonetta Milli Konewko proposes that compassion as an emotion may be activated to unify certain individuals and communities and investigates the mechanisms that allowed compassion to operate during the postwar period. Aiming to produce a deeper understanding of the ways in which Italy is re-encoded and reconstructed, this book explores the formation of Italian identity and redefines neorealism as a topic of investigation.

Autorentext

Simonetta Milli Konewko is Associate Professor in the Department of French, Italian and Comparative Languages at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, USA. Her articles have appeared in Forum Italicum, Rivista di Studi Italiani, Holocaust and Modernity, Sinestesie, Journal of Literature and Art Studies, and Athens Journal of Humanities & Art.

Klappentext

Neorealism and the "New" Italy centers on neorealist Italian artists' use of compassion as a vehicle to express their characters' interactions. Simonetta Milli Konewko proposes that compassion as an emotion may be activated to unify certain individuals and communities and investigates the mechanisms that allowed compassion to operate during the postwar period. Aiming to produce a deeper understanding of the ways in which Italy is re-encoded and reconstructed, this book explores the formation of Italian identity and redefines neorealism as a topic of investigation.

Zusammenfassung
Neorealism and the "New" Italy centers on neorealist Italian artists' use of compassion as a vehicle to express their characters' interactions.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Part I: Neorealism: What Is and is Not.- The Italian Roots of Neorealism.- Neorealism and Film.- Neorealism and Literature.- Emotions in Neorealism.- Part II:Compassion: What Is and Is Not.- The Nature of Compassion.- Compassion and Pity, Sympathy, and Empathy.- Occurrences of Compassion.- Rethinking Compassion in Light of Neorealism.- The Discourse of Compassion during Fascism.- Part III: Charting Landscapes of Compassion during World War II.- Compassion in Ginzburg's Depictions of Family Relationships.- Moravia's Representation of Compassion.- Women, Compassion, and the Resistance Movement in L'Agnese va a morire .- Compassion and the Construction of Women's Identity in Rome, Open City .- Part IV: Compassion and the Holocaust.- Compassion in Survival in Auschwitz .- Compassion in Smoke over Birkenau .- Bibliography.