Giacomo Loi
Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow - Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of Haifa
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6387-5901
Educated between Europe and the US, I am an Italian, Israel-based literary scholar and cultural historian. I have a keen interest in exploring the intersection of Greco-Roman classics and of European literature with Jewish and Hebrew literature. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue and translation among languages, cultures, and eras, my extensive language proficiency—from Ancient Greek and Latin to Italian, English, French, German, and Modern Hebrew—enables me to unveil hidden connections between diverse cultures and times, bringing these connections to the fore and to life. I enjoy starting intellectual conversations not only with my colleagues and colleagues beyond my field, but also with the broader public, through both my writing and public presentations.
Education:
• Ph.D., Classics, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
• M.A., Classics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2017
• B.A., Classics and Italian, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2015
Fellowships and Awards:
• Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship (post-doc, 2023-)
• Columbia University New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Kingdon Award (2023)
• Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris (pre-doc, 2021-22)
Research Interests:
• Exile as a Jewish state of being and European literature (Dante)
• Classical Reception and Reception Theory
• Modern Hebrew and Jewish literature
• Archaeology, Nationalism, and Colonialism
• World literature and Jewish literature, 'universal' and 'particular'
• Classicism and Modernism as co-implicated projects
Recent Projects:
• "Our Quarrel Is Of Old: Classical Reception in Modern Hebrew Literature" (PhD dissertation)
• "There Is No Analogy Within History: Classical Myth and Holocaust Literature (fellowship project, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris)
• "Gentile Antiquity: The Reception of Antiquity in Modern Italian Jewish Culture" (co-edited with Martina Piperno, Roma Sapienza, and Guido Furci, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris - forthcoming FUP 2024)
• In the style of Lucian of Samosata: Voltaire, Giacomo Leopardi, and a new avenue of philosophical critique (forthcoming CUP 2024)
Ongoing projects:
• Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity: A History and Theory of Jewish Classical Reception (book project in progress)
• Jewish Archaeology and Hebrew Literature (book project in progress)
• Music as a Literary Symbol: Thomas Mann and A.B. Yehoshua (in progress)
• Locating the Underworld: Classical Antiquity and the Jewish Imaginary of the Underworld (Furio Jesi, Lea Goldberg, Louise Glück)
Contact:
drgiacomo.loi@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6387-5901
Educated between Europe and the US, I am an Italian, Israel-based literary scholar and cultural historian. I have a keen interest in exploring the intersection of Greco-Roman classics and of European literature with Jewish and Hebrew literature. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue and translation among languages, cultures, and eras, my extensive language proficiency—from Ancient Greek and Latin to Italian, English, French, German, and Modern Hebrew—enables me to unveil hidden connections between diverse cultures and times, bringing these connections to the fore and to life. I enjoy starting intellectual conversations not only with my colleagues and colleagues beyond my field, but also with the broader public, through both my writing and public presentations.
Education:
• Ph.D., Classics, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
• M.A., Classics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2017
• B.A., Classics and Italian, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2015
Fellowships and Awards:
• Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship (post-doc, 2023-)
• Columbia University New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Kingdon Award (2023)
• Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris (pre-doc, 2021-22)
Research Interests:
• Exile as a Jewish state of being and European literature (Dante)
• Classical Reception and Reception Theory
• Modern Hebrew and Jewish literature
• Archaeology, Nationalism, and Colonialism
• World literature and Jewish literature, 'universal' and 'particular'
• Classicism and Modernism as co-implicated projects
Recent Projects:
• "Our Quarrel Is Of Old: Classical Reception in Modern Hebrew Literature" (PhD dissertation)
• "There Is No Analogy Within History: Classical Myth and Holocaust Literature (fellowship project, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris)
• "Gentile Antiquity: The Reception of Antiquity in Modern Italian Jewish Culture" (co-edited with Martina Piperno, Roma Sapienza, and Guido Furci, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris - forthcoming FUP 2024)
• In the style of Lucian of Samosata: Voltaire, Giacomo Leopardi, and a new avenue of philosophical critique (forthcoming CUP 2024)
Ongoing projects:
• Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity: A History and Theory of Jewish Classical Reception (book project in progress)
• Jewish Archaeology and Hebrew Literature (book project in progress)
• Music as a Literary Symbol: Thomas Mann and A.B. Yehoshua (in progress)
• Locating the Underworld: Classical Antiquity and the Jewish Imaginary of the Underworld (Furio Jesi, Lea Goldberg, Louise Glück)
Contact:
drgiacomo.loi@gmail.com
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PhD Dissertation by Giacomo Loi
Articles by Giacomo Loi
Now published in S. Costa - F. Gallo (ed.), Miscellanea Graecolatina, Rome - Milan 2017, 439-465
CFP by Giacomo Loi
Book Reviews by Giacomo Loi
Online Essays by Giacomo Loi
https://classicalstudies.org/node/35471
Available at:
https://sites.unimi.it/latinoamilano/racine-virgilio-co/?fbclid=IwAR3ZBxmi8Bf-E5U_9UIqK7PZ1a6W9ILDQLXxjb7XMROFy8V7-sP-yaN98GU
Papers by Giacomo Loi
Conference Presentations by Giacomo Loi
Archaeology has long been central to the nation-state discourse. In Israel, the recovery of the distant past answered not only the need for evidence of ancient Jewish life in Palestine but also for ideal models of political independence and resistance, as archaeologist Yigael Yadin’s accounts of his excavations at the Bar Kochba Caves attest. As such, Yadin’s accounts are paradigmatic of Zionism’s engagement with the Roman past and a necessary point of reference for Israeli encounters with the classical past in the 20th century.
Even though space and place have been understood as central issues in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), his multiple references to Roman archaeological sites have been overlooked. In this paper, while I bring together Amichai’s poetry, short and long prose, I focus particularly on his short stories Nina from Ashkelon and The Times My Father Died (from In This Terrible Wind, 1961). Both stories center around two Roman archaeological sites located in (culturally) opposite areas of the Mediterranean: on one hand, the painted ‘tomb of the Nymphs’ in Ashkelon, Israel; on the other, the Via Appia, just outside of Rome. In Nina from Ashkelon, in which Amichai openly attacks the Zionist manipulation of the past, the Roman tomb points out the decadence of the Land of Israel – constantly appropriated, exploited and killed, symbolized by Nina herself; in The Times My Father Died, instead, the Via Appia, the cemetery of a dead civilization, turns into an imaginary Underworld, inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid 6, where the protagonist, a Jewish Aeneas, can meet his dead father. I argue that, in contrast to the Zionist narrative of Rome as the adversarial Other, Amichai’s richly metaphorical stories engage with these sites as symbolic places that allow trans-historical encounters beyond the boundaries of Jewish culture.
The fragmentary Pro Scauro (54 BCE) was regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments of Cicero (Cic. Ad Quintum 3.8.4). The extant paragraphs received attention mainly in relation to the political turmoil in Rome in the 50s (Ghiselli 1969, Grimal 1976, Narducci 2009). Yet, the few fragments allow to identify Cicero’s strategy of othering of the Sardinian adversaries, defined as ‘Africans’ and therefore ‘Phoenicians’: on the ethical and legal level, untrustworthy.
In this paper I concentrate on three aspects. First, I follow Cicero’s suggestion to contrast his conduct with the Sicilians in the Verrines against the opponents’ failed on-field investigation: his Sicilian inquiry had allowed Cicero to highlight the Sicilians’ Trojan origin, and therefore their natural pact of faith with Rome. Instead, in this case, the Trojan legend of Sardinia (Sall. Historiae II fr. 2, Paus. X 17,6) is ignored, while the otherness of the Sardinians is underscored.
Secondly, I investigate how Cicero’s stereotype of the unfaithful Africans rests on Carthaginian/Phoenician stereotypes. Cicero draws on the stereotype of the piratesque Phoenicians to paint the portrait of the Sardinians as their descendants. I put Cicero’s remarks in the broader context of the earliest occurrence of an anti-Phoenician stigma in Greek (the Odyssey) and of its earliest Roman reception (early epic, Cato). The orator, while denying the Sardinians an identity of their own, constructs a derivative identity based on a long-standing tradition and enmity.
Thirdly, I will highlight the narrativization of the Phoenician stigma. Cicero’s ability to weave a noir subplot, like in his Pro Caelio, serves the purpose of creating an aura of moral decadence: in this case, he dramatizes the homicide within Bostares of Nora’s family, where the names themselves, which confirm the Sardinians as descendants of the Phoenicians, provide a means to establish the dangerous otherness of the islanders.
This paper deals with the representation of femininity and motherhood through non-Jewish (or even un-Jewish) symbolic figures in three Israeli novels (Amos Oz's "Elesewhere, perhaps"; A.B. Yehoshua's "The Extra"; Orly Castel Bloom's "Dolly City"). Is being a mother the necessary completion of a woman’s identity? I will deal with this question by analyzing the references to the mythological figures of Medea, Venus and the Holy Virgin. non-Jewish symbolic figures represent opposite ideal visions of the woman’s role in society. They allow the writers to reflect on the complexities of feminine identity by projecting onto the characters the bigger-than-life myths on the level of the universal, while firmly anchoring their characters to Israeli, Zionist reality.
Now published in S. Costa - F. Gallo (ed.), Miscellanea Graecolatina, Rome - Milan 2017, 439-465
https://classicalstudies.org/node/35471
Available at:
https://sites.unimi.it/latinoamilano/racine-virgilio-co/?fbclid=IwAR3ZBxmi8Bf-E5U_9UIqK7PZ1a6W9ILDQLXxjb7XMROFy8V7-sP-yaN98GU
Archaeology has long been central to the nation-state discourse. In Israel, the recovery of the distant past answered not only the need for evidence of ancient Jewish life in Palestine but also for ideal models of political independence and resistance, as archaeologist Yigael Yadin’s accounts of his excavations at the Bar Kochba Caves attest. As such, Yadin’s accounts are paradigmatic of Zionism’s engagement with the Roman past and a necessary point of reference for Israeli encounters with the classical past in the 20th century.
Even though space and place have been understood as central issues in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), his multiple references to Roman archaeological sites have been overlooked. In this paper, while I bring together Amichai’s poetry, short and long prose, I focus particularly on his short stories Nina from Ashkelon and The Times My Father Died (from In This Terrible Wind, 1961). Both stories center around two Roman archaeological sites located in (culturally) opposite areas of the Mediterranean: on one hand, the painted ‘tomb of the Nymphs’ in Ashkelon, Israel; on the other, the Via Appia, just outside of Rome. In Nina from Ashkelon, in which Amichai openly attacks the Zionist manipulation of the past, the Roman tomb points out the decadence of the Land of Israel – constantly appropriated, exploited and killed, symbolized by Nina herself; in The Times My Father Died, instead, the Via Appia, the cemetery of a dead civilization, turns into an imaginary Underworld, inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid 6, where the protagonist, a Jewish Aeneas, can meet his dead father. I argue that, in contrast to the Zionist narrative of Rome as the adversarial Other, Amichai’s richly metaphorical stories engage with these sites as symbolic places that allow trans-historical encounters beyond the boundaries of Jewish culture.
The fragmentary Pro Scauro (54 BCE) was regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments of Cicero (Cic. Ad Quintum 3.8.4). The extant paragraphs received attention mainly in relation to the political turmoil in Rome in the 50s (Ghiselli 1969, Grimal 1976, Narducci 2009). Yet, the few fragments allow to identify Cicero’s strategy of othering of the Sardinian adversaries, defined as ‘Africans’ and therefore ‘Phoenicians’: on the ethical and legal level, untrustworthy.
In this paper I concentrate on three aspects. First, I follow Cicero’s suggestion to contrast his conduct with the Sicilians in the Verrines against the opponents’ failed on-field investigation: his Sicilian inquiry had allowed Cicero to highlight the Sicilians’ Trojan origin, and therefore their natural pact of faith with Rome. Instead, in this case, the Trojan legend of Sardinia (Sall. Historiae II fr. 2, Paus. X 17,6) is ignored, while the otherness of the Sardinians is underscored.
Secondly, I investigate how Cicero’s stereotype of the unfaithful Africans rests on Carthaginian/Phoenician stereotypes. Cicero draws on the stereotype of the piratesque Phoenicians to paint the portrait of the Sardinians as their descendants. I put Cicero’s remarks in the broader context of the earliest occurrence of an anti-Phoenician stigma in Greek (the Odyssey) and of its earliest Roman reception (early epic, Cato). The orator, while denying the Sardinians an identity of their own, constructs a derivative identity based on a long-standing tradition and enmity.
Thirdly, I will highlight the narrativization of the Phoenician stigma. Cicero’s ability to weave a noir subplot, like in his Pro Caelio, serves the purpose of creating an aura of moral decadence: in this case, he dramatizes the homicide within Bostares of Nora’s family, where the names themselves, which confirm the Sardinians as descendants of the Phoenicians, provide a means to establish the dangerous otherness of the islanders.
This paper deals with the representation of femininity and motherhood through non-Jewish (or even un-Jewish) symbolic figures in three Israeli novels (Amos Oz's "Elesewhere, perhaps"; A.B. Yehoshua's "The Extra"; Orly Castel Bloom's "Dolly City"). Is being a mother the necessary completion of a woman’s identity? I will deal with this question by analyzing the references to the mythological figures of Medea, Venus and the Holy Virgin. non-Jewish symbolic figures represent opposite ideal visions of the woman’s role in society. They allow the writers to reflect on the complexities of feminine identity by projecting onto the characters the bigger-than-life myths on the level of the universal, while firmly anchoring their characters to Israeli, Zionist reality.
The paper investigates the reception of Aeneas in Italian Jewish sen. Liliana Segre's "Lettera ai maturandi" (2020) and in Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's short story "The Times My Father Died" (1959). Aeneas is portrayed as a role model or a hero with whom it is possible to identify oneself. The presence of Aeneas, his very name and attributes takes on different forms depending on the different national, cultural history.
Holocaust studies have concentrated so far on the Nazis’ exploitation of the Graeco-Roman world in order to theorize their racial-cultural superiority (CHAPOUTOT; RABINBACH AND BIALAS); instead, unexpected and unresearched is the use of Classical mythology in Hebrew Holocaust literature: is it possible to narrate, as a victim or a descendant of victims, the suffering of the Shoah? If so, is it easier to explain its meaning through mythology rather than history? Can this useful mythology be exactly the one abused by the Nazi persecutor?
In this paper I aim to present three texts, each one from a different literary genre, that help us answer these questions, as 1) all these texts engage with Greek mythology (Odysseus, Sisyphus) or culture (the Pythia) and 2) represent pioneering attempts to reflect on the Holocaust: why did the authors feel the need to engage with Greek culture to explain it?
First, I examine the short story Bertha, from Aharon Appelfeld’s collection of stories Smoke (1962) This story has been used also to exemplify the post-traumatic Muselmann complex (AMIR).
Secondly, I move to Michal Govrin’s poem Won’t You See, a preface to her collection of stories and essays Hold Onto The Sun (among which her short story The End of the Pythia, 1976).
Finally, I concentrate on the first major Israeli novel on the Holocaust, David Grossman’s See Under: Love (1986).
This exploration of selected texts aims at shedding light on the ‘other side’ of the use of Classical culture: these authors, survivors or descendants of survivors, claim back the universal power of Greek mythology, once appropriated by the persecutor, in order to give voice to the victims.
Just after the Six Days War, Haim Gouri (1923-1968) published his poetry collection "Movement to Touch". In this paper I will analyze the first section, "Nine men from the minyan". This section deals with the theme of return from war through a number of mythological figures. While it is clear that the Samson story is overturned to show the dramatic change in Israeli history post 1967, it is less obvious the role of Odysseus in this section. I contend that the poet changes the myth of Odysseus, denying him the return home, 1) to surprise the reader, thus re-enacting the public response to the 1967 war in the reader’s reaction to the poems; 2) to offer a metaliterary justification of the poet’s right to change myth. This justification can be afforded by Odysseus because of the many canonized versions, ancient and modern, of his story; in turn, the poet then extends this right to biblical myths, such as Samson, Absalom and Joseph.
My paper will show both the trajectory of change in the treatment of the Odysseus myth throughout Gouri’s poetry and the poet’s continuous manipulation of the reader’s expectations, between change and loyalty to traditional versions of myths, to surprise the reader in the same manner that the Six Days War amazed the public.
This paper attempts to explain how and why A. B. Yehoshua, a Jewish Israeli writer, uses the myth of Cimon and Pero in his 2011 book The Retrospective (original title: Hesed Sefaradi). I deal first with the literary and iconographic origins of the myth; secondly I try to identify two key-themes (metafiction and cultural appeasement) in the novel. In the end I offer an analysis of Yehoshua's relationship with the myth and Valerius Maximus, allowing some discussion of new frontiers in the field of Reception studies.
שיחה עם ג'אקומו לואי
1:45 ההתאהבות בספרות הישראלית
13:55 הדרך למחקר בספרות הישראלית
23:24 מפגש עם היהודיות, אירופה ושבועת אמונים מאת עגנון
41:22 הציונות, החיים היהודיים הטוטליים וא"ב יהושע
43:20 א"ב יהושע והשסעים בישראל
45:36 מולכו מאת א"ב יהושע
57:14 חסד ספרדי מאת א"ב יהושע
1:00:00 א"ב יהושע, יהודה עמיחי וסוגיית האשכנזיות לעומת האירופאיות
1:11:40 איזה סוג של ישראליות אפשרית היום