Sicilian Elements in Andrea Camilleri's Narrative Language: A Linguistic Analysis

by Cinzia Russi

Overview

Sicilian Elements in Andrea Camilleri’s Narrative Language examines Camilleri’s unique linguistic repertoire and techniques over his career as a novelist. It focuses on the intensification of Sicilian linguistic features in Camilleri’s narrative works, in particular features pertaining to the domains of sounds and grammar, since these have been marginalized in linguistic-centered research on the evolution of Camilleri’s narrative language and remain overall understudied. Through a systematic comparative analysis of the distribution patterns of selected Sicilian features in a selection of Camilleri’s historical novels and novels of the Montalbano series, the author identifies the individual features that have become most widespread and the lexical items that are targeted with highest frequency and consistency. The results of the analysis show that in the earlier novels, Sicilian features are rather sparse and can be attributed to linguistic situational functionality; that is, they function as indices of salient, distinctive aspects of topics, settings, events/situations, and characters. Conversely, in the latest novels, Sicilian elements pervade the entire novels and the texts are written almost entirely in Camilleri’s own Sicilian, vigatese, so that Sicilian is stripped of any linguistic situational functionality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683932796
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	10/14/2020
Series:	The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Italian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	286
File size:	963 KB

About the Author

Cinzia Russiis associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Dawn

Chapter 1 – The Debut: Il corso delle cose

Chapter 2 – Un filo di fumo

Chapter 3 – La forma dell’acqua

Part II: The Twilight

Chapter 4 – La banda Sacco

Chapter 5 – La giostra degli scambi

Part III: Trends of Evolution

Chapter 6 – Proverbs and Phrases

Chapter 7 – Food

Chapter 8 – Montalbano’s Realm

Conclusion