Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation

By Serenella Iovino. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize for 2016

Ecocriticism and Italy reads the diverse landscapes of Italy in the cultural imagination. From death in Venice as a literary trope and petrochemical curse, through the volcanoes of Naples to wine, food and environmental violence in Piedmont, Serenella Iovino explores Italy as a text where ecology and imagination meet. Examining texts where justice, society and politics interlace with stories of land and life, ecosystems and body cells, pollution and redemption, the book argues that literature, art and criticism are able to transform the unexpressed voices of the land and its people into stories of resistance and offer us a practice of liberation.