sive levels serves realism '5 cncls, :15 a IIlrthod of rl'lnfllr..

ing the ideological

foundation!' of IL" discourse" (PI' 5"·:'5) Th~p. "1l1"'{lI(}~lCal foundations"
a.re the moral values of a patriarr:bill communuv lhat perceives certain
aspects of fr.mlninity, embodied by 13 lup;l, as I ransgressions and th reats
to Its hegemony Though conveulional and arll.! rar)", thest' moral values
are presented as timeless. u ntversal, "lJtl p~l'ntt",1 hy embedding elements
of mythic discourse wllhin wb;l.t ulh"rwlsc :l1Jf'ltan< lo be II. purely realist
text, one WIth concrete referenls tbRt arc temporally, spatially, and socially
specific [mid-mneteenth century, Sicily, contadinl)
This study convincingly sbows how modern "realist" discourse is per-
meated by mythic signs which constantly remistify that which the realist
signs purport to demistify By blillianUy delineating "the Ia.yered interac-
tion of realism and mytb,N Lucente bas indeed taken us "one step closer
to understanding the historical status of our writers, of their works, and
of criticism's own discourse" (p. 146)

SANTE MATTEO
Brigham Young University

Teresa de Lauretis, Alice doesn't. Feminism, Semiotics,

Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Pp.220.

Teresa de Lauretia' Alic~ doesn', not only constructs a theory of

female subjectivity ud experience; female subjects of experience are enac-
ted by her book. Not merely the theoretical intinerary of a journey to be
completed at some future date, Alice doun" is, in many ways, the journey
itself. At journey's end, tho enduring contradiction of bistorical women,
continually represented as the "fictIona.l construct" called woman, finds its
comprehensive theoretical expressions and the subjectivity of the reader
(female or male) takes up ils contradictory place in the "ruptured fabric"
of historical practice.
or
Although each chapter Alice doesn " addresses a discrete unit in the
process of enacting a theory of contradiction and experience, the book does
not proceed in the manner of liuear. progreaaive argumentation. Chapters
One and Six deal with questions of semiotic and psychoanalytic theory
Chapters Two and Five address the status of imagos and na.rrative in the
production of meaning. And Chapters Three and Four are interpretive
critiques of two 6lms: Michael Snow's Presents and Nicolas Roeg's Bad
Timing. Complex textures and can-fully wrought Juxt:l.positioDS allow t.he
central question of each chapter to resonate In the maLerial of the book as a

19'1
wbole The theoretical questions posed til Cinema, Iitf!r:lhln!, myth, sems-
otics, psychoualysis and history illustrate thl! epistemological Interdepen-
dence to these discursive practices usually cODsi,lf!rt'l1 lQ tw separate and
autonomous. Ultimately, a method of "mapping the I?latlODs of meaning
to.. experience" (p (68) emerges from the unique con6guratioD of texts
which populate de Laurens' book.
Muy of the texts examined in Alice doesn't are of immediate int.erest
to an Italianist readership A passage from Calvlno's Le c:iHi invisibili
dehe. the term. of the search for a "city where the female subject lives"
(p.35). And indeed, Chapter One of Alice doesn't "Through the Looking-
Glass: Woman, Cinema, and Luguage," may be rea.d as a theoretical
excursus on Calvino's work
Substantial sections of Alice doesn't are devoted to an "interrogation"
of semiotic theory ud its capacity to a.ccomodate a theory of experience
In these sections. the works of Umberto Eco (in particular, La struttura as-
sente, A Theory of Semiotics, aad Lector in rabu/a) are critically examined
as they can be only by a. schclar who is a cultural citizen of both the
United States and Italy. An analytic exposition of Eco'ssemiotic/aeathetic
theories is accampanied by 1) an assessment of Eco's cultural and philoso-
phic rools in "the Italiu tradition of secular, propaiYe, democratic
rationalism, that in our century has included Croce as well as Gramaci" (p.
171) and 2) a detailed analysis of his indebtedness to the semiotic elabon-
tiona of Charles S. Peirce.
In the area of lilm theory, the origins of the semiological analysis
of cinema are traced to the -debate around cinematic: articulatiou- (p.
40) pnerated by the "Mostn del nuevo cinema" held in Pesaro in the
mid-sixties. De Lauretis' discussion of the seminal essays produced in the
context of this debate, includinr; those of Puolini (Empirismo .retjco),
provides a poin~ of departure for ~he elaboration of "imacinc" &I a ·process
of ~he articulation of meaning to im&ieB . .. and thus the mapping 01 a
social vision into subjectivity" (p. 39).
In the area of feminist theory, reference to ~he works of Lea Melandri,
Biancamana Frabotta, and Manuela Fraire provides the reader with im-
portant indic:atlona for further s~udy of the experiences of Italian feminists
in the feminist collectives of the Movimento, within the structures 01 UDI
(Unione di donne itatiane) and the PCI, and iD the context of European
intellectual debate.
But finally, the interest of Alice doesn't to a.n Italiuis~ readership is
not limited to de La.uretis' discussion of Italian writers and in~el1ectuala.
Althoup, as the sQbti~le suggests, feminism, semiotics, and cinema are
the primary field. of inquiry of Alice doesn't, other areu 01 "sipifyinc
practice" examined in the book include humaniam(s), structuralism, the
history of ideas, historical materialism, social history &lid narratoloc·

193
These are t.be cultural parameters Whl,'h inform the scb,.larly routines
of almost every student of Halian culture De Lauretis' search fur th,'
subject. In the "social technuluKlCtl<" "f IIIllaoiug production (p 31) and
her search for soeial history ~yonr\ ,l.. IRt"r~, ..·ltlln wltb the wpowrr of
institu tions" (p. 94) require the 'IUI!!Ilillllln~ :wtl retilluk lug l,f each vf our
particular engagements in discursive pradlt;c. The reading of .11Icf! dO"sn 'f
is a Journey of cnnque anti rprieHnitinn oJ all qupsLs for kllowlPrlgp.

STEPHANIE JED
University of Cehlomi«, Sail Diego

Camilla Bettoni. Italian i" North QUte7l.sland. Changes

in the Speech. 0/ Fir«! and Second Generation. Bilinguals.
Caprlcornin B. Townsville; James Cook University of
North Queensland, 19~1. Pp. 151.

Based. OD her doctoral thesis, tbe study by Camilla Bettonl, as the sub-
t.itle indicates, examines changes In the speech of lirst and second genera-
tion bilinguals. The purpose of t.he study is to "identify and describe the
examples of transference from English to ItaJian in the speech of individual
bilinguals; to anaJyse t.helr integra~ioll and report ~heir iacideaee; hally,
to determine whether and how one can speak of a Dew locaJ standard in
the case of North Queensland." While in the preface Bettoni acknowledges
that "substantiaJ worle '" still needs to be done on the sociolinguistics of
language chance, choice, aad shift in North Queensland," she also recog-
nizes t.hat "so little hu appeared in print. with reprd to Italian in contact
with English in Aust.ralia., t.ha.t. it seemed more desirable to publish the first
Indiogs t.han to wait for a comprehensive st.udy."
The first chapter sets fortb the thf!Oret.ical framework for her study.
After discussing brielly how the term bilingualism will be used - as a rela-
tive rather than absolute concept - the author explains the central COD-
cepts of translerrenee, following Clyne (Penpectivf!lI of Language Contact)
(Melbourne, 19721), being "thd type of interference which involves an out-
right transfer of elements. n As moal transference occurs from English to
Italian, the study focuses on transferllnce patterns in tbis direction.
Methodology is explained in the second chapter, which includes a.
description of emigration in bo~h Giru and Townsville, the two towns
providing informants for the investigation. Forty-sevf!n Informants - ~wenty
men and twen~y-seven Women - were interviewed fur a half hour to furnish
data. Thirty-seven subjects came from Lombardy and Venetia, with the

194