The Influence and Themes of Italian Culture in English and American Literature

On Friday, March 7, 2008 – guest speaker, Professor Emeritus of English Robert Lorenzi of Camden County College presented the lecture “The Influence and Themes of Italian Culture in English and American Literature”

The lecture planned with the English Dept. of Montclair University cited evidence of how the works of a great many American and English authors who works were influenced either directly by traveling and living in Italy or indirectly by reading about and knowing the history and culture and culture of Italy.

A DVD of the lecture has been produced for use in schools and classroom.

Professor Emeritus Robert Lorenzi of Camden County College has taught Italian Literature, World Literature, and American Literature. He is currently teaching literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

He is the recipient of the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006. In that same year he was honored by the Thomas Paine Society for his studies in early American literature.

His interest in Dante and Nathaniel Hawthorne has led to his wider study of the Italian influence on American literature.

Professor Lorenzi has lectured extensively throughout New Jersey, with additional appearances in Washington, D.C., Salem, Mass., and Brunswick, Maine. The subjects of his lectures include: Dante, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Paine, Franklin, Shakespeare, as well as popular culture lectures that range from Dracula, Salem Witches, Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper to Elvis Presley, bluegrass music, and the roots of country music in America.

Italian Influence on Major American Writers – a partial list

Benjamin Franklin – “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One”

(1775) – a satire based on Machiavelli

Washington Irving – Notes of a Tour in Europe (1804) – contains a description of Rome

Tales of a Traveler (1824) – sketches in Part III are set in Italy

James Fennimore Cooper – The Bravo (1831) – a Venetian story

Gleanings in Europe: Italy (1838)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante

Alighieri (1865-7)

Founder of The Dante Society

Edgar Allan Poe – Politian (1835) – an Italian tragedy – his only play

William Cullen Bryant – Letters of a Traveler (1850) – includes his 1834 tour of Italy

Ralph Waldo Emerson – translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova (1843)

Nathaniel Hawthorne – Italian Notebook (1858) – describes his years in Rome and his

first view of the Faun of Praxiteles which inspired The Marble Faun (1860)

Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books (not published until 1871)

“Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1834) – short story set in Padua

John Greenleaf Whittier – Miriam (1871) – a book of poetry that contains a poem

“Garibaldi”

The Chapel of Hermits (1853) – contains the poem “The Prisoner of Naples”

Harriet Beecher Stowe – Agnes of Sorrento (1862) – a novel

Herman Melville – poems: “Milan Cathedral” and “Naples in the Time of Bomba”

(The Bourbon King Ferdinand)

James Russell Lowell – a translation of I’l Pesceballo an Italian work (1862)

Fireside Travels (1864) – contains an essay “Italy”

Among My Books (1876) – contains an essay “Dante”

Oliver Wendell Holmes – The Unity of Italy (1871) – contains letters from Holmes,

Whittier, Howells, James, and others

William Dean Howells – Modern Italian Poets (1887)

Venetian Life (1866)

Italian Journeys (1867)

A Foregone Conclusion (1875) – a novel set in Italy

Indian Summer (1886) – a novel set in Italy

Henry James – “Essay on Venice” (1882)

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) – a novel set in England, France, and Italy

Roderick Hudson (1876) – a novel that describes the experiences of an

American artist in Italy

“Daisy Miller” (1879) – a short story set in Rome

“The Aspern Papers” (1888) – a novella set in Venice

Italian Hours (1909)

Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad (1869)

A Tramp Abroad> (1880)

Ernest Hemingway – “In Another Country” – a short story set in a Milan hospital

A Farewell to Arms (1929) a novel set in northern Italy

Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) – a novel set in Venice

F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender Is the Night (1934) – a novel, part of which is set in Italy

Edith Wharton – The Valley of Decision (1902)

Crucial Instances (1901) – contains two Italian short stories

“The Duchess at Prayer” and “The Confessional”

Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1900)

Italian Backgrounds (1905)

“Roman Fever” (1934) – a short story

Sinclair Lewis – Dodsworth (1928) – part set in Italy

Keep Out of the Kitchen (1929) – set near Lake Como

World So Wide (1950) – set in Florence

Erza Pound – The Cantos – complete – published posthumously in 1987

A Lume Spento (1908) – “with tapers quenched” – a volume of poetry – the title has to do with a mourning ceremony inspired by Dante

Tennessee Williams – The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950)

The Rose Tattoo (1951) – drama of a Sicilian colony in the Louisiana

Bayou

John Hersey – A Bell for Adano (1944)

Irving Stone – The Agony and The Ecstasy (1961) – a fictional account of the

life of Michelangelo