Impressions of America

Giuseppe GiacosaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 338K words
Chapters: 34

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Impressioni d'America by Giuseppe GiacosaAuthor: Giacosa, Giuseppe, 1847-1906,Language: Italian, Class: E151: History: America: United States, Release Date: Sep 10, 2014

Editor's review

This is a collection of travel observations on America by the Italian playwright and poet Giuseppe Giacosa, written in Italian and recording his impressions of and reflections on American society. Giacosa is best known to Chinese readers as the librettist of the operas La Bohème and Tosca, but this book reveals another side of him as a travel writer. The contents belong to cross-cultural observation, touching on American social life, city life, and national character; the book is short, and its style carries the sensitivity and discursiveness of a late nineteenth-century European intellectual. Its value lies not in providing systematic American studies but in presenting the immediate reactions of a European cultured man encountering the New World for the first time, which is quite useful for understanding the mutual imagining between Europe and America at the time. The Project Gutenberg electronic edition makes the original easy for Italian readers to search. It is best read as a historical text of cultural observation rather than a guide to contemporary American society; its judgments carry the limitations of their time and require the reader's own discernment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with Italian reading ability who enjoy travel writing
Those interested in late nineteenth-century European-American cultural exchange
Readers curious about Giacosa and his background as an opera librettist
Readers who enjoy cross-cultural observation and the essay form

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Italian at all and no parallel translation
Readers seeking contemporary analysis of American society
Readers who prefer systematic research or data-driven writing

Reading tips

Learn about Giacosa's opera work beforehand to better appreciate his observational perspective.
Read alongside late nineteenth-century American social history to identify the era's biases in the book.
Excerpt his specific descriptions of American customs by theme as material for cross-cultural reading.
Italian learners can closely read short passages to build up travel-writing expressions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Who was Giacosa, and why is he worth attention?

Giuseppe Giacosa was an Italian playwright and poet who wrote libretti for operas including La Bohème and Tosca. This book is a collection of impressionistic essays from his time in America, showing a side of him as an observer and prose writer beyond his libretto work.

Is this book suitable as material on American history?

It should not be treated as systematic American history material. It is a personal record of impressions, carrying the perspective and era-specific biases of a late nineteenth-century European intellectual; it is better read as a text of cross-cultural observation, to be checked against formal historical sources.

Can I read it without knowing Italian?

The original is in Italian; with no foundation at all and no parallel translation, it is quite difficult. It is advisable first to find a Chinese or English translation for reference, or to use it as advanced Italian reading material, working through it passage by passage with a dictionary.

Comments

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About the author

Giuseppe Giacosa Author · Italian · 1847–1906

Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906) was an Italian poet, playwright and opera librettist, born near Turin and died in 1906. In collaboration with Luigi Illica, he wrote the librettos for Puccini's La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, leaving a profound mark on opera history. His plays, notably Come le foglie and Tristi amori, draw on the marital, family and emotional predicaments of the late nineteenth-century Italian bourgeoisie; tightly constructed and witty in dialogue, they combine social observation with psychological insight and rank among the important works of Italian bourgeois drama of the period. The library holds ten of his works, including such comedies as La zampa del gatto, Storia vecchia and Acquazzoni in montagna, showing the variety of his subjects and dramatic forms.