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La più bella del mondo – The most beautiful in the world #2

12 talks on the Italian language

“The most beautiful in the world” is supposed to be a supermodel and yet in Italy the expression is more often than not used to define Italian language. Is Italian truly the most beautiful language in the world? It is commonplace, due to either italophilia or nationalism, but is it only this?

A series led by Dr Stefano Jossa, author of La più bella del mondo. Perché amare la lingua italiana (Einaudi) and Reader in Italian at Royal Holloway University of London, will explore the relationships between Italian and other languages, the Italian words that have become key to interpret our contemporary world, the various languages of arts, music, technology, economy and politics.

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La più bella del mondo – The most beautiful in the world #2

Italian and English face-to-face

Dr Stefano Jossa and Prof Robert Gordon in conversation

Recently, Italians have become familiar with expressions like spending review, jobs act, and question time. Conversely, confetti, al fresco, and stiletto sound all English expressions of Italian origins, but you might be surprised to know that their meaning is not the same in the two languages. What are the continuities and differences between Italian and English? Is it true that the Italian language is facing a process of Anglicisation? To what extent English enriches or impoverishes Italian? Is there a parallel process of Italianisation of the English language in place? What is the power relationship between the two languages? From these questions, and many more, Stefano Jossa and Robert Gordon will open a dialogue on Italian and English in direct confrontation.

Robert Gordon is Serena Professor of Italian and Professor of Modern Italian Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is the author or editor of several volumes, including a major study of the writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and several books on the work of Primo Levi. He has also published on the wider field of postwar cultural responses to the Holocaust, such as in the book The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944-2010, he has been co-editor of Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th-Century Italy and he is also the author of a general account of modern Italian literature, A Difficult Modernity: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Italian Literature. He has taught at Oxford University and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.

  • Organizzato da: ICI London