An encounter with historic and contemporary Naples, in which it presents itself as an irresolvable paradox: acity in economic and political decline, despite its revival in the 1990s, that, nonetheless, produces a vital and profound intellectual life and a brilliant and exuberant artistic, literary and urban culture.

Stanislao G. Pugliese (Edited By)
Stanislao G. Pugliese is Professor of Modern European History and the Queensboro Unico Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies at Hofstra University. His most recent book is Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. He is the author of Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi's Science and Humanism after the Fall (Fordham).
Pellegrino D'Acierno (Edited By)
Pellegrino D'Acierno is Professor of Comparative Literature and Languages at Hofstra University.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Returning to the Broken Fountain: Omaggio a Thomas Belmonte
Theresa Aiello
Foreword
The Irresolvable Paradox: Essaying Naples
Pellegrino D'Acierno and Stanislao Pugliese
Introduction
Naples as Chaosmos or, The City That Makes You Repeat Its Discourse
Pellegrino D'Acierno
LEARNING FROM CONTEMPORARY NAPLES/WRITING AS A NEAPOLITAN
1. Napòlide: A Man Without Naples
Erri de Luca
2. Scuorno (Vergogna)
Francesco Durante
THE VIEW FROM AMERICA
3. Naples/New York: Across the Watery Divide
B. Amore
4. Auratic Detritus/Sublime Trash: "Rough Magic" or, The Art of Transfiguration in B. Amore's Naples/New York Installation
Pellegrino D'Acierno
5. One Early Twenty-First Century Summer in Naples: A Personal Essay
John Domini
6. Investigating Gilda Mignonette as a "Newpolitan" Approach to Popular Culture
Simona Frasca
7. Go Make Naples: New Perspectives from Italian American Artists
Fred Gardaphé
8. You Want To Be Americano?
Robert Zweig
HISTORY, MEMORY & MERCY
9. Words in Journey: Echoes From Pompeii
Angelo Cannavacciuolo
10. One of These Days
Ilaria Marchesi and Simone Marchesi
11. Mediterranean Crossroads: Naples as a Model of South-Centric Cosmopolitanism
Patrizia La Trecchia
12. The Form and Language of the Neapolitan Baroque
Nick Napoli
13. The Sansevero Chapel: A Case Study of the Neapolitan Enlightenment
Salvatore Napolitano
14. Caravaggio's Mercy in Naples
Terence Ward
MALANAPOLI: FROM THE LAZARONITUM TO GOMORRAH/CAMORRA
15. Il Paradiso Abitato da Diavoli: Naples as the Obscure Object of Discourse
Pellegrino D'Acierno
16. The Contact Zone: Where Organized Crime and Everyday Life Meet
Jason Pine
17. Gomorrah: The Rest of the Story
Valerio Caprara
WRITING & SINGING NAPLES
18. Anna Maria Ortese: Breaking the Spell of Naples?
Andrea Baldi
19. Filumena Marturano: Eduardo De Filippo's Beloved Whore
Rose De Angelis
20. Matilde Serao's Art of Numbers: Naples and the Game of Lotto
Gabriella Romani
21. Opera and the Classical Tradition in Naples
Joseph Rescigno
22. Poetry
Charles Sant'Elia
23. Evoking Naples in a Story and a Story About Stories
Gioia Timpanelli
OMAGGI, or PAROLE d'AMMORE
24. Tributes to Shirley Hazzard
Joseph Connors and Jonathan Galassi
25. A Tribute to John Turturro's Passione
Stanislao Pugliese
26. A Celluloid Tribute to Thomas Belmonte
Pellegrino D'Acierno
CONTRIBUTORS