The chapter examines bias and fairness in employment testing in Italy, comparing the public and private sectors. Public sector hiring is strictly regulated, based on transparency, equality, and meritocracy, as stated in the Constitution. Hiring occurs through public competitions with standardized exams focused on qualifications and technical skills, with growing attention to soft skills. The private sector is more flexible, adapting selection to business needs and emphasizing practical skills, experience, and cultural fit, enabling quicker hiring. Private companies often use innovative methods, including AI tools and social media screening, and value diversity and international profiles. Italian labor laws, aligned with EU directives, prohibit discrimination based on sex/gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. Employers must ensure fair, compliant selection processes. Professional guidelines stress the use of valid, unbiased tools. The rise of technology in hiring highlights the need to manage algorithmic bias, with final decisions remaining a human responsibility.

Chapter 5 seeks to identify the normative foundations of a property theory of ownership and custody of cultural objects. It begins by examining the case study of the current legislative, administrative, and judicial framework in Italy, which aims to grant cultural institutions an essentially eternal right to control the reproduction and use of images of their cultural holdings. It then addresses the redefinition of a “museum” adopted in 2022 by the International Council of Museums and the implications this may have for the role of cultural institutions. The chapter then seeks to delineate the contours of a property theory of cultural objects and the corresponding sets of in rem rights and in rem duties that should apply to cultural institutions as both proprietors and custodians, by reconsidering the role of “placeness” of cultural institutions and their collections. In particular, a theory of ownership and custody of cultural objects held by cultural institutions should refer to the link between culture and space in considering the mirror-image questions that have been at the center of legal, professional, and public attention, namely: does a cultural institution have an in rem right to appropriate the value components of cultural objects, such as by limiting or prohibiting others from using or reproducing images of items in its collection; and, conversely, does a cultural institution have an in rem duty, as a custodian of culture, to actively make accessible to the public images and other information on items in its collections?

The final chapter discusses the opera’s initial reception by nineteenth-century audiences and its future legacy. As many scholars have shown, regardless of its popularity today, the ‘mad scene’ in Act III was not popular in the years following the premiere in 1835. In fact, it was the character Edgardo and his music that received the most praise from audiences and critics alike. Chapter 7 sets out to answer why this was the case by presenting key critical reviews of the work, including those in Naples and Paris. Paris is a rather telling example, for Lucia appeared in three different versions: the original Italian work at the Théâtre-Italien (1837), a French-language version at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (1839) and a French grand opéra version with ballet at the Paris Opéra (1846). In addition to its reception in the press, Chapter 7 also discusses Lucia’s popularity with publishers of opera selections for the salon and the opera’s auspicious appearance in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). Such reception points to the extent of the opera’s success outside the opera hall and serves as further evidence of Lucia in the everyday consciousness of European audiences.

Salvadore Cammarano’s libretto is based on the historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott and thus invites us to examine the real-life sources for Scott’s published work. In addition, as the Scott work was published in 1819, it follows on the heels of the more famous novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1818. Shelley’s gothic novel reveals a similar fascination with the sociopolitical environment of the early Enlightenment, as well as the spectres of madness, murder and the private lives of individuals caught up in vengeful forces beyond their control. Beyond the literary sources for the libretto, the opera also bears witness to the use of medical knowledge in defining the appearance and sound of a mentally ill young woman who has succumbed to hysteria. According to medical treatises of the time, hysteria was a disease that bore physical and emotional symptoms, the severity of which could be diagnosed with the relatively new invention of the stethoscope (1816). As Donizetti’s work premiered during a time of heightened listening, whereby audiences sought to hear within the notes of the music the inner world of the composer or the performer, the sound of pain or latent disease was now understood to reflect a lexicon of medically understood sounds that reveal themselves to the careful listener.

The beginning of Italy’s contributions to late medieval travel literature was contemporary to a broader cultural awakening taking place throughout the peninsula that would initially peak between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Thus, after having been absent for several centuries from the annals of pilgrimage literature, the first Italian pilgrimage book, the Florentine Dominican Ricoldo da Montecroce’s Liber Peregrinacionis or Itinerarium represented an original and innovative contribution to travel literature. Italian contributions during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries will continue to be distinctive and often of a broader European and/or world literary impact across multiple genres. These include Marco Polo’s Description of the World, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare, contributions of Italian humanists such as Petrarch and Boccccio to travel literature, and the Italian literature of the discovery and exploration that culminated in the Venetian Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Navigationi et viaggi.

Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper caught the new enthusiasm for Renaissance Italy among writers, artists, critics, and historians that was so prominent a feature of British culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. Particularly influential was Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), which celebrates the multiple temporalities of the Renaissance, its reconciliation of pagan and Christian, and its capacious embrace of the ancient past and a dynamically conceived modernity. Michael Field’s collection of ekphrastic lyrics Sight and Song (1892) is dominated by the Renaissance art that inspired the art and writing of many in the poets’ circle, including Pater himself, Ruskin, Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, the Berensons, Vernon Lee, Ricketts, Shannon, Beardsley, and Wilde. This chapter argues that it was these artists and writers, all drawn to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, who collectively established the most significant context for Michael Field’s creative engagement with the Renaissance.

In early summer 1914 many thought the Italian army grossly unsuited to modern warfare. Cadorna himself complained that it was on the brink of collapse. The barracks were nearly deserted, the store-rooms empty, the regiments so understaffed they could not even put on basic training, while for want of officers whole companies were being placed under newly promoted sergeants. But there was another problem: the commander-in-chief’s utter distrust of his own men, and all his fellow countrymen, come to that. It was a deep-seated conviction. Italy was too liberal and permissive, lacked ‘social discipline’ (as he called a people’s propensity for strict respect of the law, social hierarchies and institutions), and this caused an unhealthy situation which inevitably corrupted the national servicemen. Unsurprisingly, his first act as head of the army in wartime was to announce implacable iron disciplinary measures to be applied with brutal severity so as to bring the unwarlike rebellious Italian people to heel.

Around 1900, scholars commonly marked modern history from the French invasion of Italy in 1494. The size of the army that crossed the Alps – about 30,000 men – and its use of field artillery to batter down the curtain walls of ancient towns was, supposedly, unprecedented. As France’s claims in Italy were subsequently challenged by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, the duchy of Milan and other Italian states collapsed, or changed hands, with astonishing abruptness. Today, it is no longer clear that the campaigns of the Wars of Italy (1494–1559) were so sharply differentiated from those of the last phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1415–53). But the political cataclysms of our own time seem to confirm Niccolò Machiavelli’s insights into the precariousness of power at the turn of the sixteenth century. No boundary was sacred, and no government lacked a portfolio of ideas for expansion, to be tested if circumstances seemed ripe. Since a power dominant in a given region often worked to keep things as they were, one might distinguish between ambitious governments eager for war and cautious governments concerned to preserve what they had. Any move by a hegemonic power was taken by its rivals as an attempt to reduce them to abject servitude.

In this chpater, the Classics Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson and headteacher Sarah Lambert offer a survey of oracy education policies and practices outside the UK, focusing on initiatives such as the ESU International, Voice 21’s International Oracy Leaders, Oracy Italy, and Oracy Dubai. It then delves into the role of organizations like the English Speaking Union (ESU) in promoting effective communication skills globally, particularly through programs like the International Public Speaking Competition (IPSC). The chapter highlights the case study of Oracy Dubai at Dubai College, illustrating how oracy has been embedded as a whole-school priority. It discusses the challenges faced by teachers, students, and parents in embracing oracy education, including time constraints, curriculum demands, and language barriers. Recommendations are provided for cultivating connections with local schools, providing training and resources for staff, and involving young people in shaping oracy strategies.