Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity

This volume studies the literary voices of the Italian diaspora in Britain, including 21 authors and 34 pieces of prose, verse, and drama. This book shows how authors both recount the history of the migrant community in the period 1880-1980 while creatively experimenting with hybrid forms of expression and blending words with visuals. Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain discusses topical issues like migration and social integration, cultures and foods in transition, as well as plurilingualism. The book pays special attention to discussions of the horrors of the Second World War – especially on the tragedy of the Arandora Star (2^nd July 1940) – to show this literary community’s political commitments. More importantly, it will begin to fill the void left by a critical tradition which has only appreciated the northern American and Australian branches of Italian writing.

Manuela D’Amore is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Catania (Italy). She has translated and edited Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela (1741), W.M. Rossetti’s The P.R.B. Journal (1848-1853) and more recently Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s Beauty and the Beast (1867). Her latest monographs are Essays in Defence of the Female Sex. Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England, co-written with Michèle Lardy (Paris Sorbonne I) (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), and The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies. Southern Routes in the Grand Tour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).