Alessandro Portelli

Portelli offers a new and challenging approach to oral history, with an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective. Examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies, he identifies the way individuals strive to create memories in order to make sense of their lives, and evaluates the impact of the fieldwork experience on the consciousness of the researcher. By recovering the value of the story-telling experience, Portelli’s work makes delightful reading for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

Form and Meaning in Oral History

The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories

Hard Rain - Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History

Richard Wright

Ragazzo negro

History, we are often taught, is driven by vast social, political, and economic forces. But each political event, each war, each clash in the streets or at the picket lines, is experienced by individuals. It is this profound bond between public history and personal struggle, Alessandro Portelli contends, that gives oral history its significance and its power. In The Battle of Valle Giulia--the title comes from an Italian student protest of the 1960s--Portelli reflects on how to connect personal memories with history, how to fittingly collect and represent the complexity of memory. Crossing cultures, classes, and generations, he records the private and singular experiences of Italian steelworkers and Kentucky coal miners, veterans and refugees of World War II, soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Italian resistance fighters and Nazis, and members of student movements from Berkeley to Rome. By listening to those whom others presume are "without historical memory"--such as youthful protesters, or the rural Tuscan women who saw every father, son, and brother killed by Nazi soldiers--Portelli clarifies the process by which narratives come into being as oral history, and he illustrates the differences and distances between story-telling and history-telling. Portelli's articulate discussion of dialogue, representation, narrative and genre link historical analysis with literary and linguistic theory and with the concerns of contemporary anthropology.

Oral History and the Art of Dialogue

The Battle of Valle Giulia

Alessandro Portellin Käsky on täytetty on muistitietohistorian mestariteos, palkittu ja ylistetty kuvaus saksalaisten maaliskuussa 1944 Roomassa toimeenpanemasta verilöylystä ja sen kipeästä muistosta. Saksalaiset miehitysjoukot surmasivat 335 siviiliä 24. maaliskuuta 1944 rangaistukseksi edellisenä päivänä tapahtuneesta partisaanien hyökkäyksestä. Alessandro Portellin teos on moniääninen, muistitietoon perustuva kuvaus verilöylyn historiasta, sen taustoista ja vaikutuksesta. Uhrien, puolisoiden ja lasten koskettavien kertomusten lisäksi tarinassa kuullaan partisaaneja, jotka taistelivat miehittäjiä vastaan, sekä tavallisia kaupunkilaisia, jotka elivät sota-ajan tragedian. Käsky on täytetty käsittelee toisen maailmansodan aikaista taistelua vapaudesta, mutta myös sodanjälkeistä kamppailua muistista sekä kuoleman ja surun merkityksiä, jotka ulottuvat nykypäivään asti. Samalla Käsky on täytetty muuttaa lukijan kuvaa Roomasta, ikuisesta kaupungista, jonka muistissa 1900-luvun vaiheet ovat vahvasti läsnä.

Historia, muisti ja verilöyly Roomassa 1944

Käsky on täytetty

Soubor esejů Alessandra Portelliho nabízí konečně i českým čtenářům inovativní přístup k orální historii s interdisciplinární a multikulturní perspektivou. Portelli zkoumá kulturní konflikty a komunikaci mezi sociálními skupinami a třídami v průmyslových společnostech 20. století a identifikuje způsob, jakým se jednotlivci snaží vytvářet vzpomínky, aby pochopili svoji životní pouť. Zakládá si na terénní práci a podstatnou váhu přikládá samotnému verbálnímu projevu. Orální historie pro něj není pátrání po pravdivější skutečnosti a přímé zkušenosti, ale perspektiva, která nás upozorňuje na prchavou podstatu historické pravdy jako takové.

Forma a význam v orální historii

Smrt Luigiho Trastulliho a jiné příběhy

Bob Dylan’s iconic 1962 song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” stands at the crossroads of musical and literary traditions. A visionary warning of impending apocalypse, it sets symbolist imagery within a structure that recalls a centuries-old form. Written at the height of the 1960s folk music revival amid the ferment of political activism, the song strongly resembles—and at the same time reimagines—a traditional European ballad sung from Scotland to Italy, known in the English-speaking world as “Lord Randal.” Alessandro Portelli explores the power and resonance of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” considering the meanings of history and memory in folk cultures and in Dylan’s work. He examines how the ballad tradition to which “Lord Randal” belongs shaped Dylan’s song and how Dylan drew on oral culture to depict the fears and crises of his own era. Portelli recasts the song as an encounter between Dylan’s despairing vision, which questions the meaning and direction of history, and the message of resilience and hope for survival despite history’s nightmares found in oral traditions. A wide-ranging work of oral history, Hard Rain weaves together interviews from places as varied as Italy, England, and India with Portelli’s autobiographical reflections and critical analysis, speaking to the enduring appeal of Dylan’s music. By exploring the motley traditions that shaped Dylan’s work, this book casts the distinctiveness and depth of his songwriting in a new light.

Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History

Hard Rain

oralità, letteratura e democrazia in America

Il testo e la voce

due secoli raccontati da Harlan County, Kentucky

America profonda

saggi sulla cultura afroamericana

La linea del colore

immaginario e immaginazione dall'11 settembre alla guerra irachena

America, dopo

This book is a historical and cultural interpretation of a symbolic place in the United States, Harlan County, Kentucky, from pioneer times to the beginning of the third millennium, based on a painstaking and creative montage of more than 150 oral narratives and a wide array of secondary and archival matter.

An Oral History

They Say in Harlan County

Rob Kroes

the United States, 1910-1930

Social change and new modes of expression

Saggi sulla cultura afro-americana

Made famous in the 1976 documentary Harlan County USA, this pocket of Appalachian coal country has been home to generations of miners--and to some of the most bitter labor battles of the 20th century. It has also produced a rich tradition of protest songs and a wealth of fascinating culture and custom that has remained largely undiscovered by outsiders, until now. They Say in Harlan County is not a book about coal miners so much as a dialogue in which more than 150 Harlan County women and men tell the story of their region, from pioneer times through the dramatic strikes of the 1930s and '70s, up to the present. Alessandro Portelli draws on 25 years of original interviews to take readers into the mines and inside the lives of those who work, suffer, and often die in them--from black lung, falling rock, suffocation, or simply from work that can be literally backbreaking. The book is structured as a vivid montage of all these voices--stoic, outraged, grief-stricken, defiant--skillfully interwoven with documents from archives, newspapers, literary works, and the author's own participating and critical voice. Portelli uncovers the whole history and memory of the United States in this one symbolic place, through settlement, civil war, slavery, industrialization, immigration, labor conflict, technological change, migration, strip mining, environmental and social crises, and resistance. And as hot-button issues like mountain-top removal and the use of "clean coal" continue to hit the news, the history of Harlan County--especially as seen through the eyes of those who lived it--is becoming increasingly important. With rare emotional immediacy, gripping narratives, and unforgettable characters, They Say in Harlan County tells the real story of a culture, the resilience of its people, and the human costs of coal mining.

Weaving from jargon-free critical analysis to a fan’s passionate participatory research, this book places work and class at the center of the work of Bruce Springsteen. It juxtaposes the “uninspiring” work of his characters (factory workers, carwash attendants, cashiers, waitresses, farmhands, and immigrants) with the work of Bruce Springsteen himself as an indefatigable musician and performer. Springsteen is the hunter of invisible game, the teller of second-hand lives of common folks who ride used cars, believe that being born in the USA entitles them to something better, and keep the dream alive even when it turns into a lie or a curse, because what counts is dignity, the spirituality and the imagination of the dreamer, and the life-giving power of rock and roll. This book will appeal both to common readers and fans, and to scholars in fields such as sociology, history, music, cultural studies, and literature.

A Dream Deferred

Bruce Springsteen’s America

Writing, Speaking, Democracy, and American Literature

The Text and the Voice

Una controstoria degli Stati Uniti, dalla frontiera a oggi, attraverso un solo, simbolico luogo: Harlan County, Kentucky, al centro della regione mineraria dei monti Appalachi. Da Harlan la storia degli Stati Uniti è passata tutta quanta: i reduci della guerra d’indipendenza, i pionieri, la frontiera, la schiavitù, la guerra civile, le faide e il whisky clandestino, l’industrializzazione e la deindustrializzazione, la distruzione delle antiche foreste, il colonialismo interno di un capitalismo senza scrupoli, le più violente e memorabili lotte sindacali dal 1917 alla fine degli anni ottanta, l’immigrazione (anche italiana) e l’emigrazione, il movimento per i diritti civili, i disastri ambientali delle miniere a cielo aperto, l’epidemia della droga – tutto sulle spalle e sulla forza di resistenza della sua gente. Harlan è dunque un luogo intensamente reale, ma anche intensamente immaginato: c’è Harlan nei libri di Theodore Dreiser e John Dos Passos, nei film di Robert Mitchum e Barbara Kopple, nelle canzoni di Pete Seeger e Woody Guthrie, persino nei fumetti di Al Capp. Ed è un luogo di straordinaria creatività narrativa, musicale, linguistica, e di ostinata memoria. Una controstoria raccontata da Alessandro Portelli secondo la pratica della storia orale, come un montaggio di voci che ci accompagnano nel profondo delle miniere, nelle vite di chi nelle miniere lavora, vive e muore, e nelle vite delle donne che tengono in piedi le famiglie e le comunità. Raccolte in trent’anni di ricerca sul campo e intrecciate con fonti archivistiche, letterarie, giornalistiche, queste sono le voci di un’America profonda e dolorosamente reale, l’America di carbone e di sangue da cui viene l’energia che accende le luci di Hollywood e di Broadway.

Due secoli raccontati da Harlan County, Kentucky

oralità, letteratura, cinema, musica

Canoni americani

Salvatore Lupo

Lucy Riall

Alessandro Barbero

Alberto Mario Banti

Emilio Gentile

Andrea Graziosi

Alessandra Tarquini

Anna Foa

Raccontare la storia attraverso i romanzi riserva molte sorprese...Con Guerra e pace, La capanna dello zio Tom, Madame Bovary, Il Gattopardo, Arcipelago Gulag, Tropico del Cancro, Il partigiano Johnny, Se non ora, quando?, Il padrino, nove storici ci fanno viaggiare nel passato in compagnia di grandi testi letterari.

Come la letteratura racconta la storia

Romanzi nel tempo

Alessandro Portelli

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