Folklore of Sicilian Peasant Culture – Perniciously ignored in Italian (Italy Ends at the Garigliano) Studies Programs
Folklore of Sicilian Peasant Culture – Perniciously ignored in Italian (Italy Ends at the Garigliano) Studies Programs
(November 28, 2012)
The success of the Gramsci-esque “Cultural Hegemonic” dominance of Northern Italian culture over the South is brilliantly documented in Pino Aprile’s “Terroni”. Cultural dominance is achieved first, by foisting the dominant cultural onto the dominated through the education, government and media systems. Second, obliterating the dominated culture by completely ignoring the manifestations of its existences. That same process of Northern Italian dominance extends to the southern-Italian American cultural through various American universities’ “Italian (i.e. Arno Valley) Studies” programs. First, Italian American literati produce endless translations, PhD dissertations, books, articles, conferences and other representations of/about Northern culture such as: Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Raphael, Giotto, Manzoni, etc. Second, there is virtually (literally?) a complete absence of southern Italian history and culture. Translations, critical analysis and teaching of Southern scholars are not considered germane to “Italian (i.e. Renaissance) Studies” (see: Related Articles link “Amari”). Also, the languages of the South are not taught (see: Related Articles links “Privitera”, etc.), thus closing off pre-Risorgimento southern source document and oral tradition studies. For example, the failure to teach the Sicilian ‘language’ (NOT ‘dialect’ per Privitera) results in an especially egregious affront to the history and culture of Sicilian Americans. Without knowledge of the Sicilian ‘language’ – comprehensive translations and critical analysis of, ‘social history derived from’, and ‘education about’ the Sicilian peasant culture implied in oral folklore tradition is impossible. While the Italian American literati cannot translate and write enough about Manzoni’s single melodramatic romance novel, Giuseppe Pitrè’s voluminous documentation of peasant Sicilian oral tales, proverbs, legends, anecdotes, and songs remain largely un-translated, un-critiqued, un-taught and un-available to Sicilian Americans and American Terroni generally
Language and Culture
Literature: as aesthetics /entertainment – as culture
A recent episode of the popular CBS prime-time crime drama Person of Interest, demonstrates how literary art (albeit ‘low-brow’ in this case) can be both entertaining and a manifestation of the cultural values of society. This episode (#7 of the 2012 season) may be the first (certainly one of the first) time(s) that ‘same-sex marriage’ was made prominently part of a prime time broadcast television dramatic plot. Specifically:
The female character Dr. Maddy Enright, one of New York's best heart and trauma surgeons...is informed that “her wife, Amy,” will be killed if Maddy does not kill a patient during an open-heart surgery operation.
Aesthetically, the episode is a classic example of the ‘pop-culture’ melodramatic plots that dominate television drama (i.e. ‘good’ struggling against and finally overcoming ‘evil’).
However, a cultural historian in the future, noting the prominent role and repeated references to the woman Maddy’s wife Amy and their tender loving interactions, may identify this ‘drama’ as an example of transitional American cultural values vis-à-vis gay issues.
Cultural Deductions from literature
For an example of how an historian deduces past cultural values from literature, consider how a classical scholar recreates the cultural values of ancient Greece thru a study of Greek literature.
Werner Jaeger in his absolutely incredible three volume scholarly tour de force Paideia writes:
“We cannot read or write histories of Greek literature in vacuo, cut off from the society which produced it and to which it was addressed...all the ideals made manifest in [those works] were drawn, by men who created them and reduced them to aesthetic form.” (Vol I, p. xxxv emp. +)
In short, a society’s ideals are embodied in the “aesthetic forms” produced by wo/men of the society. Accordingly, we can learn the ideals of historic societies by studying the art of the society.
Thus for example, the Greek poet Hesiod's poetry may be considered in terms of poetic aesthetics (rhyme, meter, metaphor, beauty, etc.) and entertainment. It may also be used as a medium to understand the role that the ideal of 'work' played in ancient Greek culture. Jaeger writes:
"Hesiod shows us [a] basis of Greek civilization - work. (vol. I, p 57)
"Hesiod tells a long myth, in the certainty of pleasing his audience...[analogues to aesthetic/entertainment contemporary drama]
Also, the myth...summed up their whole philosophy of life [values/ideals].
Hesiod’s choice of myths reflects the peculiar outlook of the peasants...A myth is the expression of a fundamental attitude to life.
...every social class has myths of its own...besides their myths, the common folk have an ancient store of practical wisdom, laid up by the experience of immemorial generations of nameless workers (p61)
"our task at this point is only to analyze the culture of the peasants for whom Hesiod wrote...Its form, its content, and its structure mark it clearly as part of the heritage of the common folk,,
It is a complete contrast to the culture of the nobility (p62 emp.+)
Thus, we can learn the cultural values and ideals of the Greek peasants by an analysis of the myths created and perpetuated by the peasants in the mythical poetic literature they created.
Peasant culture in oral literature
The literature of illiterate peasants takes the form of oral traditions; i.e. stories passed on from generation to generations orally. At some point in the evolution of the society, the oral tradition is written down; e.g. Hesiod’s Works and Days and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey existed in oral form for centuries before they were put into the written form we read today.
For the cultural historian of the illiterate peasant culture there is a two-fold challenge. Determine:
(1) Using the methods of critical historiography, how well the written document conforms to the oral tradition.
(2) What peasant values were implied in the oral tradition.
For example: in the 1930s, under the auspices of the Joint Committee of Folk Arts of the Works Progress Administration, a project was undertaken to create written documentation of the American South’s African American’s oral folklore.
However, it was determined that some of the writers changed the oral traditions in the written form they produced. The writers introduced their own ‘white’ biases into the ‘black’ oral traditions.
In short, the written form of the oral tradition did not conform to the verbalized oral tradition pasted on from generation to generation of African Americans.
For example, Simon J. Bonner in the journal The Folklore Historian writes:
“The majority of writers, carried presuppositions about what constituted “folk” and “lore” base on their own backgrounds; these, in turn contributed to the collection of a certain type of lore.
“Many of the southern writers were white and local and were determined to make their interviews conform with white South’s traditional view of the Negro and slavery... (Vol. 18, p29-30 emp.+)
In short, you can’t believe everything you read: the cultural historian does not simply regurgitated what is written in the document; s/he must critically analyze the text and make a judgment about the consistency of the written words with the oral.
Language and Values
Of course the study of a societies cultural values through literature entails a mastery of the language in which the works were written. Werner Jaeger was one of the great masters of ancient Greek language. Accordingly, he was qualified to undertake a study of Greek values manifested in Greek literature.
Values are expressed in language. One cannot come to an understanding of values without an understanding of the language.
Sociologist Jeffery L. Sammons discussed this notion in his book Literary Sociology and Practical Criticism. He writes:
"Literary criticism is almost never able to evade the fact that language is talk about something and that it retains this quality in a literary work, [the implication of this fact is] literature cannot be understood unless the language in which it is composed is know.
Art has a culturally determined language that must be learned if it is to be fully understood.... The more cultural and social experience is shared between author and reader, the more precise will be the reconstructions in the reader's apprehensions. (p137)
Codification of Sicilian Peasant Folklore through 19th Century
Given all of the above, it follows that to study Sicilian peasant culture up through the nineteenth century one must have mastery of the Sicilian language prevailing at the time. The language Joseph Privitera calls “proto-Sicilian”; i.e. the Sicilian language uncorrupted by the Italian. Proto-Sicilian was spoken throughout the island up to circa 1900 when it became modified by Italian through schools and media.
Sicilian Peasant Culture in Folklore
As with the ancient Greek, African-American and other peasant societies throughout world history, Sicilian peasants had an oral literary tradition. Just after the 1861 “Risorgimento” unification, Laura Gonzenbach wrote down a limited number of examples of Sicilian oral literature. This was followed by the prodigious Giuseppe Pitrè’s voluminous documentation.
Laura Gonzenbach Sicilianische Märchen
An early attempt at putting Sicilian oral literature into writing was Laura Gonzenbach's collection of Sicilian fairy tales published in her book, Sicilianische Märchen (1870).
She was not a native Sicilian. A brief biography of her can be found in a collection of her stories edited and published by Jack Zipes in his book The Robber With a Witch’s Head...Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach (2004). He writes:
“Laura Gonzenbach was born in Messina, Sicily on December 26, 1842. Her father, Peter Viktor Gonzenbach (1808-1885), was a Swiss commercial agent, and her mother was German... Laura could speak four languages (German, French, Italian, and Sicilian)...
“Gonzenbach had grown up on the island with a thorough knowledge of Sicilian...she had met numerous Sicilian peasant women in Messina and Catania and in the small villages near Mt. Etna, where she spent summer vacations...”
“Because these women were generally reticent about talking to outsiders, especially men, Gonzenbach had a unique opportunity to form acquaintances with them and win their trust...she collected and wrote down tales told to her by the women and also by the women lower middle-class informants... Gonzenbach translated these tales immediately into German ( p. xiii-xiv)
She collected, translated into German and sent to a German editor/publisher a total of ninety-two “Tales” which was published in 1870 as Sicilianische Märchen (p xvi). Zipes book is a selection of thirty-one of the ninety-two.
(Hypothetical) Sicilian Studies Program
Questions about Gonzenbach’s work a professor might have students consider and research.
1) There does not seem to be any references to Gonzenbach’s original proto-Sicilian oral stories; only the German langauge renditions of the porto-Sicilian.
While Gonzenbach was fluent in the proto-Sicilian language, there are profound differences between it and the Germany language. For example, Professor Privitera notes proto-Sicilian has no future tense. German does. The German, in turn was translated into English, which differs grammatically from the German (e.g. article and noun infections).
Accordingly, a professor of Sicilian folklore would want to bring his/her students to an understanding of the accuracy of the Germany/English rendition of the original proto-Sicilian. However, this is complicated if the Gonzenbach’s original proto-Sicilian writings do not exist.
Indeed, at least one scholar rejects the idea that the written form of the Sicilian folktales are accurate representations of the original oral tradition. As with the ‘white’ codifiers of ‘black’ oral tradition noted above, Perry Nodelman writes:
“The writers who first borrowed these tales from the oral tradition changed them so they would communicate their own values to the children who heard them. As societies changed their mind about which values they wished to communicate to children, these stories changed."
(review Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization
Jack Zipe lends credence to Nodelman’s skepticism. He writes;
“Gonzenbach's book tales were intended to make the reading flow more smoothly for the reader without adding other versions and constantly rewriting the original texts...
...we do not know exactly how she went about her collecting, we are left with many intriguing questions...
Did Gonzenbach sit there with pen in hand and immediately translate the dialect tales she heard into high German?
Did she just listen and then return home and write them down from memory? (p. xxv)
In short, how do we know that Gonzenbach’s English translations of German rendition of Sicilian stories are accurate representations of the original proto-Sicilian oral stories?
2) Another question teachers might have students consider:
In Zipes book there are at least six stories that involve the characters going into and/or lost in forest. What comes to mind is that Sicily has no forest. Zipes seems to be conscious of this contradiction of tales about forest in a land with no forest. He writes:
“The forests and fertile land were gradually devastated and exploited by the nineteenth century...” (p xviii)
However, he has no more to say on the subject and there is a considerable body of documentation that the deforestation of Sicily was anything but “gradual”. In fact, by the ninetieth century Sicily had been deforested for about two-thousand years. For example:
“The deforestation of the island has been a disaster since as far back as Roman times. Once rich in forests that provided it with abundant water, Sicily had vast tracts of woodland razed over the years to turn the island into the grain belt of the Roman Empire, this massive deforestation has left Sicily with a more foreboding climate – hot and dry,” (Darwin Porter, Frommer's Sicily, 2009 p. 26.)
Numerous other historians agree that the deforestation of Sicily began with the Greeks need for timber to build their ships and continued through Roman times.
Accordingly, how does one account for an oral tradition of forest two-thousand years after the forest disappeared?
3) A third issue that students of Sicilian culture would want to consider is the concept of “feminism”. This turns on Zipes interpretation of Gonzenach’s work, He writes:
“They represent more genuinely and more candidly the female if not feminist perspective... She may have edited the tales somewhat to bring out her own progressive views about women.” (p. xii)
When considering the so-called “feminist perspective”, perhaps its best to keep in mind Perry Nodelman comment in the text cited above: “Zipes' penchant for exaggeration”
However, while one must be on guard against reading contemporary concepts into historic literature, nevertheless many of the Sicilian folktales clearly present women’s perspective.
With that in mind, it may be interesting to compare the female points-of-view in the Sicilian folktales with the oral histories of twentieth century Sicilian women documented in Giacomo Pilati’s absolutely fascinating Sicilian Women True Stories of Conviction and Courage”.
In sum, there is more to learning traditional Sicilian peasant culture than simply reading English language renditions of their oral tradition. Much scholarly work must be done to get from the English text to the reality of peasant values and ideology.
Would that American universities expand the concept of “Italian” in “Italian Studies” to include Italy south of Rome
“The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè”
Laura Gonzenbach's early attempt at rendering Sicilian fairy tales onto written form is of no small importance. Nevertheless, the proverbial Gold Standard of Sicilian peasant oral culture was produced by the amazing folklorist Giuseppe Pitre.
The magnitude of has publications of peasant oral tradition is difficult to grasp. But, the magnitude of northern Italian cultural domination in the American university system is obviously implied by the magnitude of the neglect of Pitrè’s profoundly prodigious work:
1868 Canti popolari siciliani (Sicilian Folk Songs)
1853 Raccolta dei proverbi toscani (The Collection of Tuscan Proverbs)
1869 co-founded the literary journal Nuove effemeridi siciline
1882 co-founded Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari
1885-90 Curiosita popolari tradizionali 16 volumes (Folklore Curiosiities
1871-1914 Biblioteca delle tradizioni populari siciliane 25 volumes (The Library of Sicilian folklore)
Secondary sources:
Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (Professor of Romance Languages in Cornell University) 1885. Crane held Pitre in such high regard that he dedicated his book to Pitre. He also went on to express his indebtedness:
"I must express my many obligations to Dr. Giuseppe Pitre, of Palermo, without whose admirable collection this work would hardly have been undertaken... (p vi)
Of the 109 stories in Crane’s book, 28 (25%) were taken from Pitre’s collections (also 8 were from Gonzenbach’s book)
The Folk-Songs of Italy by Miss R. H. Busk 1887
The Specimens of the canzuni and ciuri of Sicily have been selected expressly for the work by Dr. Giuseppe Pitre of Palermo
Regarding the significance of Sicilian folksongs, Miss Busk writes, based on the authority of Pitre and Salomone-Marino:
"[Pitre] desires me to bear in mind that in Sicily alone seven thousand songs have been collected...Sicily is seriously considered to be the source and parent through whom all the poetry, both popular and cultivated, passed into the rest of Italy...p44
Folklore, Professor Salomone-Marino, has pointed out with regard to the Folksongs of the island, that besides being the most voluminous, they are the only ones of all Italy that keep alive historical traditions and legends p49
How is it then that Italian Studies Programs in American universities are so oblivious to Sicilian folklore?
Giuseppe Pitre The King of Love and Other Fairy Tales from his Collection of Sicilian Folktales Edited and Translated by Marina Cocuzza and Lorna Watson
This is an especially noteworthy book because its thirteen “Tales” are presented bilingually. Accordingly, this would be a very good book for an introductory course on Sicilian folklore. Further, the preface is a very good introduction to Pitre’s work. For example, they write:
“In his preface to the first volume of Fiabe, Pitre lists 46 towns and villages as the sources of his texts, showing that the whole of Sicily is covered, though provinces of Palermo, Agrigento, Caltanissetta and Trappani are more widely represented than the eastern ones since Laura Gonzenbach had already included them in her collection which Pitre considered ‘very worthy.’ ” (e-book location 175)
The Collected Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitré ...Giuseppe Pitre (Author), Jack Zipes (Editor), Joseph Russo (Editor)
Now this is the beginning of a serious effort to bring Pitre’s work to the English speaking public; two volumes consisting of three hundred folk and fairy tales, legends, etc. and one hundred variations, and one hundred seventy four pages of “endnotes” commentary on individual stories.
Sadly, it retails for two hundred dollars. But, at least Pitre is finally getting into the public and hopefully school curriculums.
Gramsci Smiling
I will conclude again (and again, and again, and...) with the objective observation (not subjective opinion) of the profoundly systematic failure to bring to near seventeen million Americans of southern-Italian descent their history and culture. In turn, systematically attempting to make southern-Italian Americans believe that northern Italy is the essence of their history and culture.
Southern-Italian Americans are suffering a quintessential case of Gamsci’s “Cultural Hegemony.”
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