Description: This book is addressed to "lovers of paradoxes" and we have done our utmost to assemble a stellar cast of Neapolitan and American scholars, intellectuals, and artists/writers who are strong and open-minded enough to wrestle with and illuminate the paradoxes through which Naples presents itself. Naples is a mysterious metropolis. Difficult to understand, it is an enigma to outsiders, and also to the Neapolitans themselves. Its very impenetrableness is what makes it so deliriously and irresistibly attractive. The essays attempt to give some hints to the answer of the enigma, without parsing it into neat scholastic formulas. In doing this, the book will be an important means of opening Naples to students, scholars and members of the community at large who are engaged in "identity-work." A primary goal has been to establish a dialogue with leading Neapolitan intellectuals and artists, and, ultimately, ensure that the "deliriously Neapolitan" dance continues.
Brief description: Andrea Baldi is Professor of Italian at Rutgers University. He has published articles on sixteenth-century conduct books, a monograph on Alessandro Piccolomini (2001), and is the coeditor of Essays in Honor of Marga Cottino-Jones (2003). He has also devoted his critical attention to contemporary Italian literature, publishing articles on the relationship between literature and cinema (Luigi Pirandello, the Tavianis and Italo Calvino, Monicelli) and on women's writing (Anna Banti and Elsa Morante). He has worked extensively on Anna Maria Ortese, editing and prefacing The Iguana (2005) and publishing a monograph on her short fiction entitled La meraviglia e il disincanto (2010). He is currently completing a manuscript on the representation of urban spaces in Ortese's works.