Gangster Priest
Gangster Priest

Author: Robert Casillo

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 080209113X

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Widely acclaimed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and history of Southern Italy, from which the majority of Italian Americans, including Scorsese, derive. Casillo argues that these films cannot be fully appreciated either thematically or formally without understanding the various facets of Italian American ethnicity, as well as the nature of Italian American cinema and the difficulties facing assimilating third-generation artists. Forming a unified whole, Scorsese's Italian American films offer what Casillo views as a prolonged meditation on the immigrant experience, the relationship between Italian America and Southern Italy, the conflicts between the ethnic generations, and the formation and development of Italian American ethnicity (and thus identity) on American soil through the generations. Raised as a Catholic and deeply imbued with Catholic values, Scorsese also deals with certain forms of Southern Italian vernacular religion, which have left their imprint not only on Scorsese himself but also on the spiritually tormented characters of his Italian American films. Casillo also shows how Scorsese interrogates the Southern Italian code of masculine honour in his exploration of the Italian American underworld or Mafia, and through his implicitly Catholic optic, discloses its thoroughgoing and longstanding opposition to Christianity. Bringing a wealth of scholarship and insight into Scorsese's work, Casillo's study will captivate readers interested in the director's magisterial artistry, the rich social history of Southern Italy, Italian American ethnicity, and the sociology and history of the Mafia in both Sicily and the United States.

The Capuchín Museum
The Capuchín Museum

Author: AA. VV.

Publisher: Gangemi Editore spa

Published: 2016-04-06T00:00:00+02:00

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 8849277369

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The creation of the Museum of the Friars Minor Capuchin of the Roman Province is designed to highlight the spirituality of a religious order whose cornerstones are intense mysticism, a simple and sober way of life, constant involvement with people, and a strong but gentle spirit of brotherly love. The eight rooms of the museum set up inside the friary host a series of sections devoted to its origins and history as well as the life of those who joined the order and drew inspiration from the example of extraordinary Capuchin saints like Felix of Cantalice, Crispin of Viterbo and Joseph of Leonessa but also contemporary figures known to the public on a vast scale, such as St Pio of Pietrelcina, who bore the stigmata for fifty years, and Father Mariano of Turin, the first multimedia preacher.The museum is also a new repository for the artistic and historical legacy of the Capuchins of Rome and the region of Lazio, as its rooms are in fact designed not only to house and exhibit the various items but also to ensure their preservation. To this end, the opening of the museum was preceded by major work to restore the original splendour not only of various kinds of artworks, books and documents but also and above all Capuchin liturgical vessels and articles of everyday use epitomizing the spirit of humble self-sufficiency that is the hallmark of the order. Encapsulating the extraordinarily rich experience of nearly 500 years of Capuchin life, this museum is concerned not only with preserving the past but also with projecting itself into the future as a sort of ongoing laboratory of initiatives, a venue for exhibitions, cultural events and spiritual experiences aimed at establishing dialogue and asserting the continuing primacy of the human dimension today.

The Comedies of Carlo Goldoni edited with an introduction by Helen Zimmern
The Comedies of Carlo Goldoni edited with an introduction by Helen Zimmern

Author: Carlo Goldoni

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2019-12-02

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13:

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Carlo Goldoni, one of Italy's most beloved playwrights and librettists, is celebrated for his witty and honest portrayals of the emerging middle class in his works. This collection includes four of his most famous comedies: 'A Curious Mishap', 'The Beneficent Bear', 'The Fan', and 'The Spendthrift Miser'. Goldoni's plays, written in both French and Italian, make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms, offering his contemporaries a vivid reflection of themselves.