Giovanni Di Pietro, the human being

To write the foreword to the upcoming book entitled "Further reading" of the dreaded literary commentaries of Professor Giovanni Di Pietro, I did an extensive interview in order to know him better and not improvise as we regularly do when we presented a text, avoiding the mistake to criticism and reveal everything, when the mission who presents or prefaces (that is the same)(, the prologuista ends up reading the prologue), is the of suggest what is interesting for the curiosity of the reader to know what is the volume. Our role is celestino cultural. The real success of a writer happens when it attaches to your reader.

given the length of the interview (14, 803 words), as it will appear at the end of the book, to chop the curiosity of the reader future, only copy small capsules of their responses. Among the things that interested us was his date of birth, not appearing regularly in their u000afact sheets, the precise location where he came into the world in Italy and then their avatars by United States, Canada, here and in Puerto Rico, his academic background and more importantly, his work and his theories as commentator on texts (as argues that he is not critical) and finally ask advice for the young storytellers

Forced asked on accurate data, he replied:
"GDP: was born in Pratola Peligna (L'Aquila), Italy, March 18, 1944." My father was called Franco and my mother Elisa Di Cristoforo. I lived in the village until age twelve, when led me to the United States, where my father, who had all his family, emigrated. I lived in that country and I did my Bachelors at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, majoring in English and history. In 1969 I went to Canada to do a master's degree in English literature, but I ended up studying comparative literature at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. I did the master's program in u000athe University and later the doctorate in Italian literature also. I was Professor of Italian at Concordia University, in the same city of Montreal, and later at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. I arrived in Santo Domingo in 1981. I began teaching English and history in APEC and English literature and Italian at the UNPHU. In 1983 I entered the UASD as Professor of English and American literature. I was Professor of English at UTESA. In 1995 I moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I still live. I was Professor of English and Italian at the University of Puerto Rico, compound of Rio Piedras, and English at Sacred Heart University. "Di Humanities classes first in Metropolitan University and the University College East and then, in the University of Puerto Rico, Carolina campus, where still work."

after talk about his childhood, his family, his school years in his homeland and in U.S.A. and the beginning of their u000astudies at the University, tells his experience in Canada.
"GDP: he had a mad leave the United States desire and to not be able to return to Italy, thought go to study in Mexico, for some reason." But then I decided to Canada, where received a working scholarship for teaching English and doing a master's degree in English literature at Sir George Williams University in Montréal. However, my professors advised me that, if I was going to study in Canada, it would be better to enter at McGill University, in the same city. "I rejected the scholarship and I enrolled at the University to study comparative literature, which was supposed to would be the busiest in the future, something that later literary area not succeeded."

"In McGill not me the spent very well, because it did not fit the atmosphere of elitist University which was perhaps the best and most exclusive of Canada." How accepted me, still I dunno. I think that they needed to candidates for the u000aschedule of comparative literature, which was just beginning. Matter that most gave me problem and where got ill repute was, curiously, one on top of the English novel of the 19th century. Finished my master's degree with a thesis on the translations to el Italian of the poetry of William Blake made by Ungaretti. It wasn't much, as it was not my doctoral thesis on the novel of Italy resistance. Both were essentially written out of my plight as a student without money or work, and who knew exactly what to do with himself. After the masters, I returned for the first time to Italy, after fifteen years of absence, but I could not stay me. There was no work and I not already used to the way of doing things beyond. "So I went back to Canada."

I like that you explain why your task of critic that he has read and commented books beyond that nobody has read or very few, is not well understood if you lived many years in the u000acountry, you were more than one University Professor, you married with a Dominican and your children are italo-Dominican and when you talk about ours.
GDP-as my family, I met my wife in Canada, where he studied. I have been married only once. I am one of those men who take a relationship seriously and stays with her partner in life. This is what my father did. And also my grandfather and, I suppose, to my great-grandfather. My two sons, Franco and Paolo, born in Santo Domingo. So I am the only foreigner in the family.

When I arrived in Santo Domingo, the early years lived them essentially as a tourist. Entered and easily out of the country and returned regularly to Canada and I spent the summer in Italy. A few months of arriving in the country, began to realize the misery that existed and that there was no future of truth. You missed Canada and my life as a professor there. I wanted to leave Santo Domingo and back to my usual life, but u000aIt was not possible. I said that I would be some years and take advantage of them to learn Spanish. But, as always in life, things were complicated and I had to stay indefinitely. It ended my life as a tourist when came the crisis in the mid-1980s, and the making of impossible Canada my return, I found already trapped in the country. Since I had to live now as a Dominican, with all the problems that this implied, I decided to understand the environment in which I was and tried to make it through literature, which was normal for me. Hence my interest in the novel. As he had done a dissertation on novels, I thought it would be good to get fully into the Dominican novel reading.

As both as a teacher at the UASD, I realized once the undervaluation of young students, many of them of scarce resources. With that feeling on top, they would hardly arrive u000ato be successful in life. I wondered, so where was this attitude, and discovered that they did not have much knowledge of their own country, often so despised and had understood that there was little that was valuable in their literature. The classes of literature took letters were essentially a string of names, dates, titles and empty slogans, repeated and borrowed from Marxism. The first day I walked into a classroom to teach American literature, I remember that I started to talk, obviously in English, and a student suddenly gets up and tells me that they did not understand anything and that it was the language of Yankee imperialism. To which I answered that I was Canadian and, if you want to win a war, should understand the enemy.

From then on I started giving my lessons in a very different way of how
was in Canada.

( )
the teacher in the UASD
my chairs of the UASD u000athey implied the need to enter the contents of a literary work and relate these contents with the society that had taken place. My analysis, therefore, were always directed towards a moral social and moral at the same time. Social, because you are using the text to provide a message of encouragement for my students because I understand that only which is exceeded in the individual has the potential to overcome later in social terms. I surprised myself of the audacity of my analysis of the texts, they were poems, short stories, theatre or novels, as did everything. Eventually, I started to tell me that it would be interesting if you could get these analyses was in class in the form of essays. I think that all my critical method, which he checks off "contenidista" and "moralist", dates back to these experiences. From there, and also of the deep dissatisfaction that I always felt towards methods that never discussed ideas of literary texts, but u000athey are mere skin, which are pure "plumbing", as I say. To me, for example, on one occasion I played swallow two-hour seminar on a poem by Leopardi where teachers discussed why here the poet had used a comma, but in the other version a semicolon. I swore that, when he would give classes, would not anything like that, but it would explain the meaning of the text, underline the relevance that could have in the life of a reader or the student.

Share this article

Digg it!

del.icio.us

MySpace

Facebook

Fark

Reddit

Newsvine