Elizabeth Schächter

Carlo Alberto Viterbo: A Neglected Figure of Italian Judaism

Abstract Carlo Alberto Viterbo (1889–1974) made wide-ranging contributions over many years to the development and dissemination of Jewish heritage in Italy, and yet there has been no detailed study of his achievements. He was one of the leading figures of the ‘Jewish Renaissance’ based in Florence in the decades before the First World War; he was president of the Italian Zionist Federation in the 1930s; he was at the centre of the bitter divisions between fascist and anti-fascist Jews prior to the Racial Laws. In the period after the Second World War, he was one of the key players to reconstitute Jewish life in Italy, and editor, from 1944 to 1974, of Israel, the most influential Jewish journal of its time. This article draws not only on published material, but also on Viterbo’s unpublished diary notes and letters which have never been studied.

Giovanni Verga and Emile Zola : A Question of Influence

proposed to discuss some of the influences which have already been established, to suggest further possible influences, and to indicate which of the two authors might have benefitted most from ideas inspired by the other. Foremost among the critics who have dealt with the connection between Verga and Zola is Rene Temois, who, in a number of articles in recent years in Les Cahiers Naturalistes, has expounded his belief that Zola was influenced by Verga’s I AI alavoglia in the writing of La Joie de Vivre. During the late 1870s, Zola was already gaining an international reputation, and by 1880 had puhlished nine of the twenty novels of his Rougon-M acquart series. Verga’s popularity in Italy had, on the other hand, if anything, declined when he turned from writing society novels