New reflections on Primo Levi
Subtitle: before and after Auschwitz
By: edited by Risa Sodi and Millicent Marcus
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Italian and Italian American studies; Italian and Italian American studies (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9780230103856
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation
Description: Primo Levi's hold on scholarly, critical and public attention grows with the passing of time. He commands a position of prominence in discourses ranging across the disciplines of Holocaust studies, Jewish studies, Italian literature, politics, history and philosophy. Certain of his concepts (the "grey zone") or certain concepts popularized through his works (the Musulmann phenomenon) play a significant role in contemporary intellectual discourse. In addition, Levi's reflections on the act and the possibility of witness, and of recounting trauma, are increasingly cited by a range of thinkers. 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 theatre, for example). Of special interest and utility are the chapters that situate his thought within wider contexts: his epistemological connection to ancient Greeks, and his contributions to Holocaust phenomenology.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-206) and index.
Table of contents: title: Politics, nationalism, and collective memory; title: Primo Levi's politics: Giustizia e libertà, the Partito d'azione and "Jewish" antifascism / Stanislao Pugliese; title: The itinerary of an identity: Primo Levi's "parallel nationalization" / Nancy Harrowitz; title: Primo Levi and Holocaust memory in Italy, 1958-1963 / Robert Gordon; title: Unbearable witness; title: Trauma and latency in Primo Levi's The reawakening / Jonathan Druker; title: The witness's tape recorder and the violence of mediation / Lina Insana; title: The strange case of the Muselmänner in Auschwitz / Joseph Farrell; title: Strategies of communication and representation; title: Primo Levi and Italo Calvino: two parallel literary lives / Marina Beer; title: "L'immagine di lui che ho conservato": communication and memory in Lilít / Elizabeth Scheiber; title: The survivor as author: Primo Levi's literary vision of Auschwitz / Lawrence Langer; title: Authorship and fashioning the text; title: Appreciating Primo Levi: how it all started / Nicholas Patruno; title: Levi's western: "professional plot" and history in If not now, when? / Mirna Cicioni; title: Mind the gap: performance and semiosis in Primo Levi / Ellen Nerenberg.