Italiano In Diretta is an introductory four-skills text, appropriate for use in a course meeting three days a week, or classes meeting four or five days a week in which significant class time is devoted to interactive work. The text features a communicative language approach, streamlined, "synthetic" grammar presentations, and a strong cultural focus. Student participation is encouraged through short dramatized dialogues and interactive activities. Authentic materials appear in every chapter, bringing present-day Italian culture directly into the classroom. A lively introduction to language and culture, combined with strong emphasis on the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, make Italiano In Diretta a solid beginning text with a contemporary flair.

Italiano in Diretta: An Introductory Course (Student Edition) (2nd Edition)

Pease, Antonella

Bini, Daniela

McGraw=Hill

Very nice book, i recommend it if you are interested on learning Italian.

Italiano in Diretta: An Introductory Course; Instructor's Edition

Random House]

"This is a work of recuperation, but it is also a work of real resonance in the context of today's postmodern philosophical and literary preoccupations. Bini has made a relatively unknown but no less significant figure of early twentieth-century Mitteleuropean culture live again in a rigorous, impassioned, and, in its own way, courageous piece of work."--Rebecca West, University of ChicagoAt the turn of the century, Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910) flashed through the night sky of Mitteleuropa. In this first book-length study in English of the Italian cultural figure, Daniela Bini compares her subject to a meteor, a shooting star who dazzled the world briefly with his philosophy, poetry, and painting, then shot himself at the age of twenty-three.   Michelstaedter was born to a cultured Jewish family in the city of Gorizia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire where Italian was spoken. After completing high school he moved to Florence to study art and there met and tutored the Russian divorcée Nadia Baraden. Her suicide in 1907 marked the onset of the severe depression that plagued him the last three years of his life.   During that time, however, he produced a body of work that anticipates existentialism in philosophy and expressionism in art; his analysis and criticism of language establish him as a forerunner of Blanchot, Bataille, and Derrida. In the frenetic intellectual and artistic activity of those years, Michelstaedter repudiated the compartmentalization of all knowledge from philosophy to science. He completed his dissertation, a powerful piece of rhetoric arguing against rhetoric, on the day he committed suicide.   Bini traces the trail of Michelstaedter's star, claiming that he sheds light on the twentieth century precisely because he found philosophical discourse inadequate. Based on close readings of his papers, poetry, and letters, and on a detailed analysis of his pencil and chalk drawings, she portrays him as the emblematic figure of the turn of the century, tragically frustrated in his attempts to grasp the essence of life and a mode to express it.Daniela Bini is assistant professor of Italian at the University of Texas in Austin. She is the coauthor of Italiano in diretta: An Introductory Course and Vivere all'italiana: An Italian Reader, and the author of Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi.

Carlo Michelstaedter and the Failure of Language

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

University Press of Florida

"A splendid piece of scholarly work. . . . Scholars of twentieth-century theater, whether Italianists or not, would find this book immensely useful."--Rebecca West, University of Chicago This study examines the later plays of Luigi Pirandello--those he wrote for his actress and muse Marta Abba--in light of the recent publication of their correspondence. It traces the Nobel Prize winner's entire creative process, revealing how his perception of women shaped his philosophy of art and life, and highlights the structurally necessary shift from the male protagonist of the early and more famous plays and novels to the female protagonist of the late theater. With sensitive commentary on the letters, Daniela Bini reads the plays the old maestro wrote for the young actress as the sublimation of an erotic impulse he denied throughout his life. From Diana and Tuda to The Mountain Giants, Bini maintains, Pirandello makes love to Marta in the only way he could, the mystical union of the creator and his muse. She points out a contrast between the man and the artist--the traditional and conservative son, husband, and father who coexisted with the revolutionary writer who changed the course of 20th-century drama. Pirandello had called theater the art form closest to life, constantly changing and renewing itself on stage. Abba was the catalyst, Bini argues; together, the muse and the maestro gave life to immortal artistic creations.
Daniela Bini is associate professor of Italian at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include Carlo Michelstaedter and the Failure of Language; A Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi; and (with Antonella Pease) Italiano in Diretta: An Introductory Course.

Pirandello and His Muse: The Plays for Marta Abba (Crosscurrents)

Dramas & Plays

Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi (Stanford French & Italian Studies)

Anma Libri

Portrait of the Artist and His Mother in Twentieth-Century Italian Culture (The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Italian Studies)

Arts & Photography

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

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