Literary Italy

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and we are getting dizzy from the evocation of the street scenes of Naples, with butcher shops dangling carcasses, the perfumed scents of flowers, herbs, vegetables, cod and eels! We read Mathilde Serao's "To the Tenth Muse." And Jim has a vivid hallucination of a mechanical monkey banging a cymbal. Please get us some help.

Anne and Jim travel south geographically and backwards in time to the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, witnessed by Pliny the Younger.

Cynthia Damon's translation of Pliny's letters on Pompeii
Map of Vesuvius, Misenum, Herculaneum, and Pompeii
Pliny's letters from Volcanoes of Europe by Scarth and Tanguy

In this episode we return to Dante and to Florence with Canto 2 of the Inferno! Dante is sort of like the middle of the Bingo card of Italian literature--plus this year marks the 700th anniversary of his death (Jim asks Anne during the podcast what the precise date is, and she fluffs and fumbles, but the answer is September 1321). In addition, we talk about some of our favorite slightly-off-the-beaten-path places to visit in Florence. Enjoy!

Join us for Anna Maria Ortese's "A Pair of Eyeglasses" in Neapolitan Chronicles (Italian: Il mare non bagna Napoli ). Published in English for the first time in decades in 2018, Ortese gives us a gritty glimpse of postwar Naples in a slice-of-life tale about . . . optometry. Ortese retired to Rapallo in Liguria and died there in 1998.

• Un paio di occhiali  short film adaptation on YouTube.
• Neapolitan Chronicles on Amazon.com

Anne and Jim note their disappointing lack of Scooby Doo-like adventures in Umbria. Then they talk about 6 (5 1/2?) scary places in Italy!

1. Poveglia
2. Lucca and the legend of Lucida Mansi
3. Benevento, the City of the Witches
4. Capannori and the Oak of the Witches
5. Triora, the Salem of Italy
6. Werewolves of Puglia

Erin O'Rourke's translation as read by her. 
In this episode we talk about Halloween traditions in Italy (especially Sicily and Sardinia) and the ghost/vampire story by Sicilian writer Luigi Capuana.

Jim's back from his walk on the Via Francigena from Siena to ROME! And a mere hours after his plane touches down on American soil, Anne interviews our jetlagged traveler to find out more about the experience, the towns he visited, the people he met, and (of course) the food he ate. And maybe it's true that, "No matter where you go, there you are." How would you like spend a two-week sabbatical walking two hundred miles in Italy? 

A little bit of everything as we chat some more about Elena Ferrante, the Amalfi Coast, the island of Ischia, even Pisa! And Jim (nervously) talks about his plans to spend two weeks walking from Siena to Rome! That's three regions in one episode--a record! (Campania, Tuscany, and Lazio)

With his cookbook "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well," Pellegrino Artusi revolutionized the idea of Italian home cooking, and 130 years later the book is *still* a bestseller in Italy. But in addition to offering delicious recipes, the book is just a fun read, as Artusi offers anecdotes about cooking, eating, and life in general! Buon appetito!!!

In this episode we’re talking about Cesare Pavese and the Piedmont region. Poetry and prose, city and country, wine and chocolate, love and loss: it’s all here!