Il Presidente Scoppetta, ovvero La Società della Madonna della Pace [President Scoppetta, or The Society of Our Lady of Peace (from its founding to its dissolution)]. Philadelphia: [n.p.], 1927.

Il Presidente Scoppetta, ovvero La Società della Madonna della Pace [President Scoppetta, or The Society of Our Lady of Peace (from its founding to its dissolution)]. Philadelphia: [n.p.], 1927.

This parody by Seneca (b. Benevento, 1890 - d. Philadelphia, 1952), a professor of languages at the University of Pennsylvania, reflects the bitter laugh of early Italian American comedy. It is filled with a corrupted version of dialect, along with comic drawings and, in its own words, an “outrageous narrative, full of double-entendres,” a “wry extended joke” on the divisions that stifled the Little Italies.

This work was dedicated to the king of early Italian American comedy, Eduardo Migliaccio, also known as Farfariello. A year after publication as a book, it appeared in twelve illustrated chapters in La Follia di New York.

Martino Marazzi's Voices of Italian America: a History of Early italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from this work in translation.

The narrative is a story about a garrulous shop owner turned politician, Francesco Scoppetta, who founds an organization named “The Society of Our Lady of Peace,” of which he is sure to be president. He is painfully surprised when he learns of his well-qualified running mate (whom Scoppetta calls his “anniversary” instead of his “adversary”), the somewhat comically named Angelantonio Squaglianzogna.

Seneca uses Scoppetta’s effusive character and misplaced jargon to mock his fellow Italian Americans, but all the while embracing his culture — the title page declares, “Scritto per diverter tutti e non offender nessuno,” that is, “Written to entertain all and offend no one.”

Pasquale Seneca

[n.p.]

1927

21.5 x 14cm; 82 p.

Italian