Il bandito pugliese Nicola Morra, vita ed avventure, riordinate ed ampliate da A. De Martino [Nicola Morra: Bandit from Puglia. Life and adventures, reordered and expanded by A. De Martino] [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1914.

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Title

Il bandito pugliese Nicola Morra, vita ed avventure, riordinate ed ampliate da A. De Martino [Nicola Morra: Bandit from Puglia. Life and adventures, reordered and expanded by A. De Martino] [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1914.

Description

In 1896, Pasquale Ardito published in Italy Le avventure di Nicola Morra, ex bandito pugliese. There is no indication (at least in this facsimile) that De Martino, who takes credit here for having "reordered" or "rearranged" as well as "enlarged" the text, obtained the rights from Monopoli of Ghezzi, the Italian publisher.

At the end of the text proper is a "seconda parte" entitled "Il Forzato" (i.e. prisoners who do hard labor), entitled "List of political prisoners condemned to hard labor after 1848," by region in Italy, name, and number of years of hard labor, a recognition that those called "bandits" were really political prisoners.

The "bandit," whose life, especially whose "adventures" captured the imagination of listeners, was an admired figure in the imagination of those who resisted the unification of Italy that took place during the Risorgimento. See, e.g., Augusto Bassetti's Amor Focoso, in the collection. But the fascination with "bandits" really goes back even to an earlier time of the romantic hero of orally transmitted stories in parts of Italy where there was no or little literary culture, what Walter Ong called a "residuary oral" culture. The "fixing" in print of the form in the ever sightly different oral retellings of such stories shows the kind of "bridge" between oral culture and literate one that many Italians to whom the U.S. Italian publishing industry appealed needed.

Creator

Antonio De Martino
[Pasquale Ardito]

Publisher

Società Libraria Italiana

Date

1914

Format

23.25 x 15.5cm; 262 p.

Language

Italian

Citation

Antonio De Martino and [Pasquale Ardito], “Il bandito pugliese Nicola Morra, vita ed avventure, riordinate ed ampliate da A. De Martino [Nicola Morra: Bandit from Puglia. Life and adventures, reordered and expanded by A. De Martino] [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1914.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed March 28, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/152.

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