Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Publication
    Arrigo Boito e Filippo Tommaso Marinetti tra il Reale e l'Ideale
    (Unione Stampa Periodica Italiana, 2012)
    Il presente articolo si occuperà di colmare questa lacuna tramite l’esplorazione del rapporto tra i protagonisti dei movimenti: Arrigo Boito e Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. L’analisi sarà incentrata sul periodo pre-futurista di Marinetti, quello in cui si delinearono l’ideologia e i metodi della sua avanguardia. Lo scopo di questo articolo è dunque quello di analizzare la natura del contatto e del rapporto tra i due scrittori tra il 1898 e il 1909, rivelando fonti primarie inedite. Particolare enfasi verrà data all’aspetto fondamentale che a mio avviso collega i due autori: la loro preoccupazione per il conflitto tra il Reale e l’Ideale, il dualismo normalmente associato a Boito ma che è anche un elemento sottovalutato della poetica del Marinetti pre-futurista.
      333
  • Publication
    From Symbolism to Futurism: Poupées Électriques and Elettricità
    (Rivista di Studi Italiani, 2009-06)
    In this paper I examine how Filippo Tommaso Marinetti transformed his three-act drama Poupées Électriques (1909) into a one-act Futurist sintesi Elettricità (1913). Through the analysis of draft versions of Elettricità and of Futurist manifestos, both the process by which Marinetti enacted this textual transformation and the reasons behind the changes made to the French play in its passage to becoming an Italian playlet will be explored. A series of drafts for Elettricità, which are held at the F. T. Marinetti Papers Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, uncover the progression from French original to Italian translation. Close textual analysis of the two plays will demonstrate how Marinetti sought to change elements of Poupées Électriques so that Elettricità would reflect his new Futurist world vision. The significance of many of the changes Marinetti made only becomes clear when Elettricità is contextualised within other developments in the Futurist ideology and to Marinetti's manifesto output.
      574
  • Publication
    Enhancing employability skills through the use of film in the language classroom
    (Routledge (Taylor and Francis), 2013-03-21)
    Employability is increasingly becoming a central aspect of higher education in the United Kingdom and it is becoming imperative that modern foreign languages teachers engage directly and sincerely with the employability agenda. This article proposes the use of feature films as a successful method for developing and promoting employability skills in the language classroom, an approach which has not thus far been adopted. I begin by discussing different models for the delivery of employability skills and I provide an overview of employability initiatives that have been undertaken by languages departments. The key issues of embedding versus stand-alone modules and the role of academics are addressed. While many employability initiatives focus on the development of transferable skills, I argue that the development of commercial awareness among undergraduate students has been neglected and that film is a suitable medium to rectify this. In the final section of the article, I provide some sample activities which use clips from feature films to develop employability skills at all levels of proficiency, focusing on linguistic competency and the development of commercial awareness.
      633Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Futurist War Noises: Confronting and Coping with the Sounds of the First World War
    (University of California, 2013)
    The aim of this article is to examine the Futurists’ understanding and interpretation of war noises and sounds before, during and after their First World War combat experiences. Firstly, the article examines the Futurist interest in war noises prior to the outbreak of the First World War, secondly, it analyses the Futurists’ experience of war noises during their time in combat, focusing particularly on the figures of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, and Luigi Russolo. Finally, the article examines how the Futurist pre-war pronouncements on war noises offered them a ‘road map’ of how to behave in battle and provided them with successful strategies for coping with the intensity of life in the trenches.
      798
  • Publication
    Le Roi Bombance: The original Futurist Cookbook?
    (Manchester University Press, 2013-11-30)
    The themes of nutrition and digestion fascinated Filippo Tommaso Marinetti for much of his career. The beginnings of this interest can be traced to his pre-Futurist play Le Roi Bombance, published in 1905, in which the eponymous obese king is concerned only with satisfying his enormous appetite. Marinetti’s most famous discussion of gastronomy and gastronomic habits came in 1932 with the publication of La cucina futurista, which was a development of the Manifesto della cucina futurista launched two years previously. Although Le Roi Bombance and La cucina futurista were born out of very different cultural and historical periods, I wish to suggest that a continuum of ideas exists between them, specifically with regard to the relationship between eating and creativity and between eating and identity.
      640
  • Publication
    "The Futurist Mountains": F.T. Marinetti's experiences of mountain combat in the First World War
    (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2013-06-24)
    Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s first experience of active combat was as a member of the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Motorists in the autumn of 1915, when he fought in the mountains of Trentino at the border of Italy and Austria Hungary. This article examines his experience of mountain combat and how he communicated aspects of it both to specialist, Futurist audiences and to the general public and soldiers, through newspaper articles, manifestos, ‘words in freedom’ drawings, speeches and essays written between 1915 and 1917. Marinetti’s aim in all of these wartime writings was to gain maximum support for the Futurist movement. Thus, he adapted his views to suit his audience, at times highlighting the superiority of the Futurist volunteers over the Alpine soldiers and at others seeking to distance Futurism from middle class intellectualism in order to appeal to the ordinary soldier. Marinetti interpreted the war’s relationship with the natural environment through an exclusively Futurist lens. He sought to ‘futurise’ the Alpine landscape in an effort to reconcile the urban and technophilic philosophy of his movement with the realities of combat in the isolated, rural and primitive mountains of Trentino.
    Scopus© Citations 9  592