In and Out of the Cocoon: Reflections of a Literary Scholar on a Bootless Italy

MARTINO MARAZZI teaches Italian Literature at the University of Milan and has been Tiro a Segno Visiting Professor in Italian American Culture at New York University, and a fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. His most recent books are Italexit. Saggi su Risorgimento e disunione nazionale (Cesati 2019); Danteum. Studi sul Dante imperiale del Novecento (Cesati 2015); Voices of Italian America: A History of Early Italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Fordham UP 2012); A occhi aperti. Letteratura dell'emigrazione e mito americano (FrancoAngeli 2011). He is also the author of two novels, Sbagli (Castelvecchi 2019) and La finta (Nerosubianco 2015), and of two collections of short stories, La fine del Purgatorio and Filogenesi (both with Sedizioni, 2008 and 2010). His nonfiction essay “Amelia,” in The Carolina Quarterly (2016), has been listed in The Best American Essays 2017.