ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS

Ailhlin Clark

Changing consumers: Changing food consumption patterns in Southern Italy in the mid-twentieth century

Italy's "economic miracle" is often perceived as a time of changes in living conditions as accelerating economic development led to more affluent lifestyles and this is thought to have been reflected in what people ate and how they thought about food. Recent research has confirmed that Italians did not automatically reach for new, unfamiliar foods, but that they often asserted their new economic well-being through the increased consumption of already familiar products. Using information drawn from interviews conducted with inhabitants of the Amalfi Coast area, this paper seeks to identify changing food consumption and identities during the post-World War Two period, by assessing how the purchase of food was directly influenced by the physical landscape and ways that new ideas and products were introduced and incorporated into people's lives.

Ian Seed

An Introduction to Italian memorialistica of the Resistance

This paper presents a brief overview of Italian Resistance memorialistica* and the historical and cultural context in which it arose. I shall also pick out three specific texts which relate to directly to the Resistance: Banditi (1946) by Pietro Chiodi (1915 - 1970), Guerriglia nei Castelli Romani (1946) by Pino Levi Cavaglione (1911-1971), and Un uomo, un partigiano (1945) by Roberto Battaglia (1913-1963). Using these texts as examples, I hope to draw out some common threads and to demonstrate their value not only as historical documents, but as a literature in their own right. I hope to show that the memorialistica of the Resistance needs more research and assessment to determine its weight and importance in modern Italian literature.

Two key questions I would find it useful for the forum to consider at the end of the paper are:

1. Which areas of memorialistica might be especially interesting for the purposes of more detailed research? This can be taken from a literary, historical, psychological or other point of view.

2. In what ways could the Italian Resistance memorialistica be compared with resistance or war literature of other European countries during the period 1945-1950?

* Memorialistica is a term which can include diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, letters and so on.

Maria Pujol-Valls

Elements from English literature in Vallverdú's novels: a familiar exoticism

This paper is focussed on the Catalan author Josep Vallverdú and his connections with English literature. I particularly explore Vallverdú's three versions of classic English novels; my aim is to prove that introducing elements from this foreign literature in his novels cannot be seen as exotic because writing two sequels to Treasure Island and creating a version of Robinson Crusoe is a consequence of translating English books and because including foreign settings is a recurrent element in his fiction.