Approaches to Teaching the Works of Primo Levi
- Editors: Nicholas Patruno, Roberta Ricci
- Pages: x & 176 pp.
- Published: 2014
- ISBN: 9781603291484 (Paperback)
“This volume fills a gap, and it is easy to say that it will become a standard reference guide for undergraduate courses on Levi and even for graduate students who want to begin their research on Levi.”
—Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston
Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and renowned memoirist, is one of the most widely read writers of post–World War II Italy. His works are characterized by the lean, dispassionate eloquence with which he approaches his experience of incarceration in Auschwitz. His memoirs—as well as his poetry and fiction and his many interviews—are often taught in several fields, including Jewish studies and Holocaust studies, comparative literature, and Italian language and literature, and can enrich the study of history, psychology, and philosophy.
The first part of this volume provides instructors with an overview of the available editions, anthologies, and translations of Levi’s work and identifies other useful classroom aids, such as films, music, and online resources. In the second part, contributors describe different approaches to teaching Levi’s work. Some, in presenting Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, and The Drowned and the Saved, look at the place of style in Holocaust testimony and the reliability of memory in autobiography. Others focus on questions of translation, complicated by the untranslatable in the language and experiences of the concentration camps, or on how Levi incorporates his background as a chemist into his writing, most clearly in The Periodic Table.
Jonathan Druker
Pietro Frassica
Massimo Giuliani
Nancy Harrowitz
Lina Insana
Massimo Lollini
Millicent Marcus
Gaetana Marrone
Letizia Modena
Elisabetta Properzi Nelsen
Risa Sodi
Acknowledgments (ix)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Editions (3)
Editions in Italian (3)
Anthologies (3)
Translations (4)
The Instructor’s Library (5)
Reference Works (5)
Historical and Literary Studies (6)
Aids to Teaching (10)
Films and Music (10)
Internet Resources (11)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (15)
Testimony, Autobiography, and the Holocaust
Levi and the Question of Style: The Challenge of Teaching the Holocaust (20)
“What Would I Have Done?”: Teaching The Drowned and the Saved to Confront Moral Ambiguity (29)
Poetry and Testimony in Levi (36)
Levi’s “Personaggi Ambigeni” and the Negotiation of Autobiography and Memory (45)
The Complexity of Levi: Approaching Levi through His Interviews, Articles, and Short Essays (56)
Language, Language Instruction, and Translation
At Loggerheads with Lager Jargon: The Untranslatable in Levi (68)
Teaching Levi in an Advanced Language Course (80)
Translation Matters: Levi, Translation, and Holocaust Testimony (89)
Teaching Individual Works
Adventures in Interdisciplinarity: Teaching The Periodic Table (105)
The Humanity of the Elements: An Interpretation of Levi’s The Periodic Table (117)
The Writing of History in Levi’s and Francesco Rosi’s La tregua (128)
If Not Now, When? A Novel of Reconciliation and Becoming (137)
Notes on Contributors (155)
Survey Respondents (157)
Works Cited (159)
Index (173)
