Search results for "Nikolai Leskov"

Which Language Does the Subaltern Speak? Leskov, Verga, and Internal Orientalism

2021

During the last few years, Edward Said’s conceptual frame has been used in peculiar ways in relation to both Italy and Russia. The differences are self-evident, but a look at the similarities can be useful as well: if in the Italian case, from a political point of view, a discussion of internal colonisation would be meaningless, from a cultural one the situation changes: the picture of an essentially backwards, ‘Oriental’ South is mainly the product of Southern intellectuals working in exile in Northern Italy after the failed revolution of 1848. The parallel is thus a working one for what concerns the ‘Westernisers’ party; it could be useful to extend it to the ‘Slavophile’ (in the broadest…