The I-NEXT Kiwanis club proudly presents:
Dr. Gaetano Cipolla, who will discuss the important historical, cultural, and literary contributions Sicily has bestowed to the world.
It has been argued that Sicilian is the oldest Romance language, separate and distinct from Italian, and not an Italian dialect.
Dr. Cipolla was born in Francavilla di Sicilia (ME) and emigrated to the United States in 1955. He earned a B.S. from NYU’s School of Education, a Master’s degree from Hunter College and a Ph.D. in Italian from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1974. He has taught at several universities, the last of which was St. John’s University, where he taught Italian language and literature for 31 years; he is now Professor Emeritus.
He has written numerous scholarly articles on Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Pirandello, Calvino and others. Some of his scholarly essays appear in Labyrinth: Studies on an Archetype. He is also the author of two very successful booklets entitled What Italy Has Given to the World and What Makes a Sicilian? both of which have sold more than 25,000 copies each. Some of his studies on Sicilian culture are published in Siciliana: Studies on the Sicilian Ethos and Literature. In 1987 he became President and Editor of Arba Sicula, an international organization founded in 1979 that promotes the language and culture of Sicily continuing the publication of Arba Sicula, a unique bilingual journal (Sicilian/English), and starting a new series of Sicilia Parra, a 20-page magazine without interruption from 1989 to the present. These publications are available on CDs.
He is the general editor of three series of books for Legas: “Pueti d’Arba Sicula/Poets of Arba Sicula,” which has already published seventeen bilingual volumes (most of which with his own translation into English verse), “Sicilian Studies,” with twenty-nine volumes, and “Italian Poetry in Translation” with sixteen volumes already in print. Gaetano Cipolla is the American voice of Sicilian poetry. He has translated and published the work of many Sicilian poets, including Giovanni Meli, Vincenzo Ancona, Nino Martoglio, Antonino Provenzano, Antonio Veneziano, Salvatore Di Marco, Senzio Mazza, Nino De Vita, Piero Carbone, Maria Nivea Zagarella. In 2015, to honor Giovanni Meli on the 200th anniversary of his death, he published an extensive bilingual anthology of his poetry entitled The Poetry of Giovanni Meli. A second anthology, entitled Giovanni Meli, Social Critic, containing his satires and some poems not published during his lifetime was published in January 2020.
Owing to the success of his Learn Sicilian textbook, Dr/ Cipolla published an advanced textbook entitled Learn Sicilian II which is written in Sicilian for students who have a basic knowledge of the language. This book is rather unique in that it focuses also on the “variazione diatopica” the variations of the language used in different parts of the island. The two texts are used in Sicilian courses offered by Italian Charities of America.
Meeting ID: 816 9781 7465
Passcode: 555235
For more information, please contact Cindy Champer.
