Robert Viscusi is Professor of English and Executive Officer at The Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York. He is the author of many books, including Max Beerbohm, or, The Dandy Dante: Rereading with Mirrors and Astoria: A Novel, winner of a 1996 American Book Award.

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Secrets of Italian American Writing

1. English as a Dialect of Italian

2. De vulgari eloquentia: Ordinary Eloquence in Italian America

3. Il caso della casa: Stories of Houses in Italian America

4. Immigrant Ambitions and American Literature

5. The Text in the Dust: Writing Italy across America

6. The Semiology of Semen: Questioning the Father

7. Circles of the Cyclopes: Concentric History

8. A Literature Considering Itself: The Allegory of Italian America

9. The Italian American Sign

10. The Imperial Sopranos

Notes