Italo Calvino
b. Oct. 15, 1923, Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba--d. Sept. 19, 1985, Siena,Italy), Italian journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, whose whimsical and imaginative fables made him one of the most important Italian fiction writers in the 20th century.
Calvino left Cuba for Italy in his youth. He joined the Italian Resistance during World War II and after the war settled in Turin, obtaining his degree in literature while working for the Communist periodical L'Unità and for the publishing house of Einaudi. From 1959 to 1966 he edited, with Elio Vittorini, the left-wing magazine Il Menabò di letteratura.
Two of Calvino's first fictional works were inspired by his participation in the Italian Resistance: the Neorealistic novel Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947; The Path to the Nest of Spiders), which views the Resistance through the experiences of an adolescent as helpless in the midst of events as the adults around him; and the collection of stories entitled Ultimo viene il corvo (1949; Adam, One Afternoon, and Other Stories).
Calvino turned decisively to fantasy and allegory in the 1950s, producing the three fantastic tales that brought him international acclaim. The first of these fantasies, Il Visconte Dimezzato (1952; "The Cloven Viscount," in The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount), is an allegorical story of a man split in two--a good half and an evil half--by a cannon shot; he becomes whole through his love for a peasant girl. The second and most highly praised fantasy, Il Barone Rampante (1957; The Baron in the Trees), is a whimsical tale of a 19th-century nobleman who one day decides to climb into the trees and who never sets foot on the ground again. From the trees he does, however, participate fully in the affairs of his fellow men below. The tale wittily explores the interaction and tension between reality and imagination. The third fantasy, Il Cavaliere Inesistente (1959; "The Nonexistent Knight,"in The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount), is a mock epic chivalric tale.
Among Calvino's later works of fantasy is Le Cosmicomiche (1965; Cosmicomics), a stream-of-consciousness narrative that treats the creation and evolution of the universe.
Carter, Albert Howard. Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy, Studies in Speculative Fiction. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1987.
of water to the west of the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the Pacific
Antonio Manetti, a Florentine Humanist and holder of several high offices in Florence, was the author of the delightful novella known as the Fat Woodworker. This novella, first published in its final refined form in the 1470’s, tells the story of a rather complex and slightly malicious trick created by a genius architect known as Filippo Brunelleschi. While the trick is mean at times, the reader tends to not notice because of the comedic way that the fat woodworker reacts. The prank that unfolds can in some ways closely parallel the many tricks that occur in Boccaccio’s Decameron, though there are some large differences.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was a catastrophic time period of international stock market crashes, economic downfall, and drop in world trade. This led millions of Americans to become poor overnight, spiraling them into poverty. Consequently, many factories, businesses and construction projects slowed down. With production at a minimum, many workers were let go. Those who kept their jobs saw their salaries drop. Soon, the streets were filled with bread lines, soup kitchens, and many homeless people. Even farmers throughout the nation were affected by this event and were forced to leave their harvesting crops rotting in the fields. In 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, introduced to Congress the New Deal. The programs and projects of the New Deal were designed to help America and her citizens get back on their feet. The Public Workers Administration (PWA) was created by the National Industry Recovery Act on June 16, 1933 by the President's first female cabinet member, Frances Perkins, along with Harold Ickes, James Farley, and Henry
Claudio Monteverdi was born on May 15, 1567, in Cremona Italy, Monteverdi was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and the Early Baroque, and is known as the first great composer of the operas. Monteverdi is often view as a composer of the Renaissance and of the Baroque, there is a similar pattern in that is continuous that is often viewed through his work in both styles. Monteverdi often was known as a dramatic composer, while bringing a tremendous meaning from the text he set that often turned each of his pieces into a believable musical and also produced a dramatic statement.
Italo Calvino was born in 1923 in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba. He then moved to Italy with his family were he was raised and lived most of his life. Italo joined the Italian Resistance during World War II and when the war ended he settled in Turin, and earned his degree in literature. Italo worked as an editor for the Communist periodical L'Unità and for the publishing house of Einaudi. He also went on to write more Italian fantasy books other then the Baron in the Trees, he wrote a total of nineteen short stories. Italo Calvino died in September of 1985, in Siena Italy.
When Benito grew up, he became a teacher in an elementary school in his nearby town; he spread the party of doctrine. He was an editor, Fascist leader, laborer, soldier, politician, and revolutionary. He also became a socialist. He graduated at a teacher training school in Forli, Italy. Then he moved to Switzerland to find a better place to work. When he was in Switzerland, he got in trouble with the law for fighting and vagrancy. So he decided to move back to Italy but in Trent. When he returned he worked for a Social Newspaper Company and wrote several literacy works. The newspaper was called "La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle). The towns’ people loved his newspaper. He made the editor of "Avanti" (forward); it was published in Milan.
“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an inability to form human attachment, aggressive narcissism, and antisocial behavior defined by a constellation of affective, interpersonal and behavioral characteristics, most of which society views as pejorative” [1]. Some of these characteristics include irresponsibility, grandiosity, cunning, deceitfulness, selective impulsivity, sexual promiscuity, lack of empathy, etc. People who are psychopathic display not only antisocial behavior but also emotional impairment such as the lack of guilt. They are able to prey on others using their charm, deceit, violence or any other methods that allow them to get what they want. A strong feature of most of the behavior exhibited by individuals with psychopathy is that it is mostly instrumental in nature. They are extremely goal-oriented with interests in acquiring wealth, sexual opportunities and increased status.
In 1935 Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (later the Work Projects Administration) or WPA. Its purpose was to create all kinds of jobs at every level of the skill ladder, preserving professional and technical skills while helping individuals maintain their self-respect. Artists in the program were paid $15 to $90 a month for a wide variety of assignments. Work-relief programs functioned under this basic design from 1935 to 1939 when the WPA was renamed the Work Projects Administration and placed under the supervision of the Federal Art Project (FAP). The WPA/FAP lasted until 1943, when productivity and employment soared as the country marshaled its resources to fight World War II.
When President Roosevelt took office, he had to fulfill his ideas he had proposed to the citizens while campaigning for presidency. One of his ideas and that he fulfilled, was the Works Progress Administrati...
The Great Depression was one of the greatest challenges that the United States faced during the twentieth century. It sidelined not only the economy of America, but also that of the entire world. The Depression was unlike anything that had been seen before. It was more prolonged and influential than any economic downturn in the history of the United States. The Depression struck fear in the government and the American people because it was so different. Calvin Coolidge even said, "In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope—nothing of man." People were scared and did not know what to do to address the looming economic crash. As a result of the Depression’s seriousness and severity, it took unconventional methods to fix the economy and get it going again. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration had to think outside the box to fix the economy. The administration changed the role of the government in the lives of the people, the economy, and the world. As a result of the abnormal nature of the Depression, the FDR administration had to experiment with different programs and approaches to the issue, as stated by William Lloyd Garrison when he describes the new deal as both assisting and slowing the recovery. Some of the programs, such as the FDIC and works programs, were successful; however, others like the NIRA did little to address the economic issue. Additionally, the FDR administration also created a role for the federal government in the everyday lives of the American people by providing jobs through the works program and establishing the precedent of Social Security...
As the years continued, the WPA was heavily critized by government officials. They argued that money was being spent to fund projects that had no real benefit to the economy. Some examples of this included tap dancing lessons and murals painted in post offices. These government officials created a new word “boondoggling”, which was used to describe the agency’s make-work projects as a waste of money. Roosevelt then quickly retorted to this complaint that “the high morale of the workers was well worth the cost”. Others out in the west, such as Governor Charles H. Martin of Oregon wrote to Mr. Roosevelt complaining that it was unfair to expect Americans to work from sunrise to sunset for so little money, while the WPA program workers worked for less money and time. Despite Roosevelt’s efforts to cease the critics, federal funding for the WPA decreased over the years...
Growing up as a young boy in the late 1800’s, with having little, except his family, was all Mussolini needed really needed in life. Benito grew up as the eldest child amongst his siblings. Mussolini's early political views were heavily influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini, a socialist who admired figures with humanist tendencies such as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini. His father's political outlook, influenced in a way that Benito would look at the world politically. He was a bit of what you would call a trouble maker. ”As a child he was a difficult boy to handle, he was disobedient and a had a quick temper. Benito was expelled not only once, but twice for assaulting fellow classmates with a penknife”(Smith 1).
Donadoni, Eugenio. A History of Italian Literature, Volume 1. New York: New York University Press, 1969.
The elements at play in the novel and film are quite remarkable for their traditionally universal appeal.3 The fates of two adolescents, one jailed the other unwilling jailer, intersect and are soon bound together in a struggle for survival at the hands of unsuspecting enemies. The filmmaker's aim was to adopt a child's unadulterated point of view in referential opposition to the surrounding adult world. Given the suspenseful plot and the exploration of the young protagonists' fears at coping with a habitat they must disavow, such an aim and narrative scheme were expected to gather much attention.4 The pre-teens Michele, the novel's principal hero, and Filippo the kidnapped child are ultimately elevated from a pit of dirt and fear, the antechamber of death, chiefly by their own heroic praxis. Yet the problematic lack of any meaningful degree of depth in the novel and film seems to lie precisely with its overly schematic construction, tailored to safely weather the otherwise unpredictable market.