Living to witness, witnessing to live

Rosa Maria Grillo

doi:10.6093/978-88-946103-2-1

Living to witness, witnessing to live

Authors

Rosa Maria Grillo

University of Salerno

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2070-5601

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-946103-2-1

Keywords:

testimonial literature, Uruguay, Argentina, dictatorships

Synopsis

Publisher: Department of Arts and Humanities Università degli Studi di Salerno (DipSum)

Series: Collection of Studies and Texts. From ancient Babel to the encounters of Modernity

Pages: 356

Language: Italian

NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/resolver.pl?nbn=urn:nbn:it:unina-28244

Abstract: At particular moments in history and in certain places, a large number of texts are produced in response to the need to bear witness to natural catastrophes, genocides, dictatorships, extermination camps, tragedies, usurpations and violence, which would otherwise remain silenced or erased from history and from the collective imagination: this is the case of the survivors of the Nazi-Fascist extermination camps in Europe and, in the 1970s and 1980s, of the dictatorships of the Latin American Cone Sur.

Living to testify, testifying to live aims to draw a map of the ways of testifying, focusing on Argentina and Uruguay and identifying recurring narrative typologies, all under the banner of the search for "words to say it" and ways that make the unbelievable credible and that favour the communicative process since, as Primo Levi already recognised, it is listening that enables testimony and gives it meaning.

The book is completed by an Appendix on Italian publications related to those events.

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Author Biography

Rosa Maria Grillo, University of Salerno

Full Professor of Spanish American Language and Literatures at the University of Salerno. She directs the narrative collection “A Sud del Rio Grande” (Oèdipus), the “Biblioteca di Studi e Testi” (Share Libri) and the magazine “Testi e Linguaggi” (Carocci).

She has organized congreses in the University of Salerno: La poetica del falso: Max Aub tra gioco e impegno (1994); Italia-Uruguay: culture a contatto (1995); La Spagna degli anni ’30 di fronte all’Europa (1998); Ruta de la Obsidiana. Percorsi mesoamericani (2002); America Latina tra Civiltà a Barbarie (2004); Voci femminili dell’America Latina (2005); Viaggiatori latinoamericani in Campania (2006); Il Viaggio e il Mito (2007); Encuentros y desencuentros entre Europa y América (2008); Storia e storie migranti (2008); Letterature americane e altre arti (2009); Donne in movimento (2010); Penelope e le altre (2011); Luoghi e tempi di (de)formazione (2012); El olvido está lleno de memoria (2013); Venimos de la noche y hacia la noche vamos (2014); La letteratura latinoamericana e il Nobel (2015); Tradizioni classiche e letterature latinoamericane (2016); Ariel e Calibán mirando al Sur (2017); Letteratura testimoniale e costruzione della storia (2018); Eva e le altre (2019); Sognavamo nelle notti feroci. Tornare. Mangiare. Raccontare (2021).

She organized the Literature sessions of the yearly conferences organized by Centro Studi Americanistici “Circolo Amerindiano” (Perugia, Sao Paolo, Mérida, Oxaca, Puebla, U.N.A.M.).

She has published five monographs: “Racconto spagnolo”, Salerno 1985, “Exiliado de sí mismo, José Bergamín en Uruguay 1947-1954”, Montevideo, 1995, and Lleida, 1999, “Emigrante/Inmigrado. Una doble identidad en el espejo de la literatura uruguaya”, Salerno-Milano, 2003, Escribir la Historia, Alicante, 2009, “Cinquecento anni di Civiltà e Barbarie”, Salerno, 2021; her essays have been published in Italy, Francia, España, Escandinavia, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, United States, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Her main research topics are: XIXth and XXth century Spanish-speaking authors’; Historical Novel; Travel Emigration and Exile Literature; Women’s Autobiography; Modernity/Postmodernity discourse; testimonial literature.