text:
Pragmatics

In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA).

Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation, as well as nonverbal communication. Theories of pragmatics go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. In 1938, Charles Morris first distinguished pragmatics as an independent subfield within semiotics, alongside syntax and semantics. Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J.L. Austin and Paul Grice.

Origin of the field
Pragmatics was a reaction to structuralist linguistics as outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure. In many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. Pragmatics first engaged only in synchronic study, as opposed to examining the historical development of language. However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from signs existing purely in the abstract space of langue. Meanwhile, historical pragmatics has also come into being. The field did not gain linguists' attention until the 1970s, when two different schools emerged: the Anglo-American pragmatic thought and the European continental pragmatic thought (also called the perspective view).

Areas of interest

 * The study of the speaker's meaning focusing not on the phonetic or grammatical form of an utterance but on what the speaker's intentions and beliefs are.
 * The study of the meaning in context and the influence that a given context can have on the message. It requires knowledge of the speaker's identities, and the place and time of the utterance.
 * The study of implicatures: the things that are communicated even though they are not explicitly expressed.
 * The study of relative distance, both social and physical, between speakers in order to understand what determines the choice of what is said and what is not said.
 * The study of what is not meant, as opposed to the intended meaning: what is unsaid and unintended, or unintentional.
 * Information structure, the study of how utterances are marked in order to efficiently manage the common ground of referred entities between speaker and hearer.
 * Formal Pragmatics, the study of those aspects of meaning and use for which context of use is an important factor by using the methods and goals of formal semantics.
 * The study of the role of pragmatics in the development of children with autism spectrum disorders or developmental language disorder (DLD).

Ambiguity
Ambiguity refers to when it is difficult to infer meaning without knowing the context, the identity of the speaker or the speaker's intent. For example, the sentence "You have a green light" is ambiguous, as without knowing the context, one could reasonably interpret it as meaning:
 * the space that belongs to you has green ambient lighting;
 * you are driving through a green traffic signal;
 * you no longer have to wait to continue driving;
 * you are permitted to proceed in a non-driving context;
 * your body is cast in a greenish glow;
 * you possess a light source which radiates green; or
 * you possess a light with a green surface.

Another example of an ambiguous sentence is, "I went to the bank." This is an example of lexical ambiguity, as the word bank can either be in reference to a place where money is kept, or the edge of a river. To understand what the speaker is truly saying, it is a matter of context, which is why it is pragmatically ambiguous as well.

Similarly, the sentence "Sherlock saw the man with binoculars" could mean that Sherlock observed the man by using binoculars, or it could mean that Sherlock observed a man who was holding binoculars (syntactic ambiguity). The meaning of the sentence depends on an understanding of the context and the speaker's intent. As defined in linguistics, a sentence is an abstract entity: a string of words divorced from non-linguistic context, as opposed to an utterance, which is a concrete example of a speech act in a specific context. The more closely conscious subjects stick to common words, idioms, phrasings, and topics, the more easily others can surmise their meaning; the further they stray from common expressions and topics, the wider the variations in interpretations. That suggests that sentences do not have intrinsic meaning, that there is no meaning associated with a sentence or word, and that either can represent an idea only symbolically. The cat sat on the mat is a sentence in English. If someone were to say to someone else, "The cat sat on the mat", the act is itself an utterance. That implies that a sentence, term, expression or word cannot symbolically represent a single true meaning; such meaning is underspecified (which cat sat on which mat?) and potentially ambiguous. By contrast, the meaning of an utterance can be inferred through knowledge of both its linguistic and non-linguistic contexts (which may or may not be sufficient to resolve ambiguity). In mathematics, with Berry's paradox, there arises a similar systematic ambiguity with the word "definable".

Referential uses of language
The referential uses of language are how signs are used to refer to certain items. A sign is the link or relationship between a signified and the signifier as defined by de Saussure and Jean-René Huguenin. The signified is some entity or concept in the world. The signifier represents the signified. An example would be:

 * Signified: the concept cat
 * Signifier: the word "cat"

The relationship between the two gives the sign meaning. The relationship can be explained further by considering what is meant by "meaning." In pragmatics, there are two different types of meaning to consider: semantic-referential meaning and indexical meaning. Semantic-referential meaning refers to the aspect of meaning, which describes events in the world that are independent of the circumstance they are uttered in. An example would be propositions such as:

 * "Santa Claus eats cookies."

In this case, the proposition is describing that Santa Claus eats cookies. The meaning of the proposition does not rely on whether or not Santa Claus is eating cookies at the time of its utterance. Santa Claus could be eating cookies at any time and the meaning of the proposition would remain the same. The meaning is simply describing something that is the case in the world. In contrast, the proposition, "Santa Claus is eating a cookie right now", describes events that are happening at the time the proposition is uttered.

Semantic-referential meaning is also present in meta-semantical statements such as:

 * Tiger: carnivorous, a mammal

If someone were to say that a tiger is a carnivorous animal in one context and a mammal in another, the definition of tiger would still be the same. The meaning of the sign tiger is describing some animal in the world, which does not change in either circumstance.

Indexical meaning, on the other hand, is dependent on the context of the utterance and has rules of use. By rules of use, it is meant that indexicals can tell when they are used, but not what they actually mean.

 * Example: "I"

Whom "I" refers to, depends on the context and the person uttering it.

As mentioned, these meanings are brought about through the relationship between the signified and the signifier. One way to define the relationship is by placing signs in two categories: referential indexical signs, also called "shifters", and pure indexical signs.

Referential indexical signs are signs where the meaning shifts depending on the context hence the nickname "shifters." 'I' would be considered a referential indexical sign. The referential aspect of its meaning would be '1st person singular' while the indexical aspect would be the person who is speaking (refer above for definitions of semantic-referential and indexical meaning). Another example would be:

 * "This"
 * Referential: singular count
 * Indexical: Close by

A pure indexical sign does not contribute to the meaning of the propositions at all. It is an example of a "non-referential use of language."

A second way to define the signified and signifier relationship is C.S. Peirce's Peircean Trichotomy. The components of the trichotomy are the following:

 * 1. Icon: the signified resembles the signifier (signified: a dog's barking noise, signifier: bow-wow)
 * 2. Index: the signified and signifier are linked by proximity or the signifier has meaning only because it is pointing to the signified
 * 3. Symbol: the signified and signifier are arbitrarily linked (signified: a cat, signifier: the word cat)

These relationships allow signs to be used to convey intended meaning. If two people were in a room and one of them wanted to refer to a characteristic of a chair in the room he would say "this chair has four legs" instead of "a chair has four legs." The former relies on context (indexical and referential meaning) by referring to a chair specifically in the room at that moment while the latter is independent of the context (semantico-referential meaning), meaning the concept chair.

Referential expressions in conversation
Referring to things and people is a common feature of conversation, and conversants do so collaboratively. Individuals engaging in discourse utilize pragmatics. In addition, individuals within the scope of discourse cannot help but avoid intuitive use of certain utterances or word choices in an effort to create communicative success. The study of referential language is heavily focused upon definite descriptions and referent accessibility. Theories have been presented for why direct referent descriptions occur in discourse. (In layman's terms: why reiteration of certain names, places, or individuals involved or as a topic of the conversation at hand are repeated more than one would think necessary.) Four factors are widely accepted for the use of referent language including (i) competition with a possible referent, (ii) salience of the referent in the context of discussion (iii) an effort for unity of the parties involved, and finally, (iv) a blatant presence of distance from the last referent.

Referential expressions are a form of anaphora. They are also a means of connecting past and present thoughts together to create context for information at hand. Analyzing the context of a sentence and determining whether or not the use of referent expression is necessary is highly reliant upon the author/speaker's digression- and is correlated strongly with the use of pragmatic competency.

Silverstein's "Pure" Indexes
Michael Silverstein has argued that "nonreferential" or "pure" indices do not contribute to an utterance's referential meaning but instead "signal some particular value of one or more contextual variables." Although nonreferential indexes are devoid of semantico-referential meaning, they do encode "pragmatic" meaning.

The sorts of contexts that such indexes can mark are varied. Examples include:
 * Sex indexes are affixes or inflections that index the sex of the speaker, e.g. the verb forms of female Koasati speakers take the suffix "-s".
 * Deference indexes are words that signal social differences (usually related to status or age) between the speaker and the addressee. The most common example of a deference index is the V form in a language with a T–V distinction, the widespread phenomenon in which there are multiple second-person pronouns that correspond to the addressee's relative status or familiarity to the speaker. Honorifics are another common form of deference index and demonstrate the speaker's respect or esteem for the addressee via special forms of address and/or self-humbling first-person pronouns.
 * An Affinal taboo index is an example of avoidance speech that produces and reinforces sociological distance, as seen in the Aboriginal Dyirbal language of Australia. In that language and some others, there is a social taboo against the use of the everyday lexicon in the presence of certain relatives (mother-in-law, child-in-law, paternal aunt's child, and maternal uncle's child). If any of those relatives are present, a Dyirbal speaker has to switch to a completely separate lexicon reserved for that purpose.

In all of these cases, the semantico-referential meaning of the utterances is unchanged from that of the other possible (but often impermissible) forms, but the pragmatic meaning is vastly different.

The performative
J.L. Austin introduced the concept of the performative, contrasted in his writing with "constative" (i.e. descriptive) utterances. According to Austin's original formulation, a performative is a type of utterance characterized by two distinctive features:
 * It is not truth-evaluable (i.e. it is neither true nor false)
 * Its uttering performs an action rather than simply describing one

Examples:
 * "I hereby pronounce you man and wife."
 * "I accept your apology."
 * "This meeting is now adjourned."

To be performative, an utterance must conform to various conditions involving what Austin calls felicity. These deal with things like appropriate context and the speaker's authority. For instance, when a couple has been arguing and the husband says to his wife that he accepts her apology even though she has offered nothing approaching an apology, his assertion is infelicitous: because she has made neither expression of regret nor request for forgiveness, there exists none to accept, and thus no act of accepting can possibly happen.

Jakobson's six functions of language
Roman Jakobson, expanding on the work of Karl Bühler, described six "constitutive factors" of a speech event, each of which represents the privileging of a corresponding function, and only one of which is the referential (which corresponds to the context of the speech event). The six constitutive factors and their corresponding functions are diagrammed below.

The six constitutive factors of a speech event

 * Context
 * Message

Addresser - Addressee
 * Contact
 * Code

The six functions of language

 * Referential
 * Poetic

Emotive --- Conative
 * Phatic
 * Metalingual

 * The Referential Function corresponds to the factor of Context and describes a situation, object or mental state. The descriptive statements of the referential function can consist of both definite descriptions and deictic words, e.g. "The autumn leaves have all fallen now."
 * The Expressive (alternatively called "emotive" or "affective") Function relates to the Addresser and is best exemplified by interjections and other sound changes that do not alter the denotative meaning of an utterance but do add information about the Addresser's (speaker's) internal state, e.g. "Wow, what a view!"
 * The Conative Function engages the Addressee directly and is best illustrated by vocatives and imperatives, e.g. "Tom! Come inside and eat!"
 * The Poetic Function focuses on "the message for its own sake" and is the operative function in poetry as well as slogans.
 * The Phatic Function is language for the sake of interaction and is therefore associated with the Contact factor. The Phatic Function can be observed in greetings and casual discussions of the weather, particularly with strangers.
 * The Metalingual (alternatively called "metalinguistic" or "reflexive") Function is the use of language (what Jakobson calls "Code") to discuss or describe itself.

Related fields
There is considerable overlap between pragmatics and sociolinguistics, since both share an interest in linguistic meaning as determined by usage in a speech community. However, sociolinguists tend to be more interested in variations in language within such communities. Influences of philosophy and politics are also present in the field of pragmatics, as the dynamics of societies and oppression are expressed through language

Pragmatics helps anthropologists relate elements of language to broader social phenomena; it thus pervades the field of linguistic anthropology. Because pragmatics describes generally the forces in play for a given utterance, it includes the study of power, gender, race, identity, and their interactions with individual speech acts. For example, the study of code switching directly relates to pragmatics, since a switch in code effects a shift in pragmatic force.

According to Charles W. Morris, pragmatics tries to understand the relationship between signs and their users, while semantics tends to focus on the actual objects or ideas to which a word refers, and syntax (or "syntactics") examines relationships among signs or symbols. Semantics is the literal meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied meaning of the given idea.

Speech Act Theory, pioneered by J.L. Austin and further developed by John Searle, centers around the idea of the performative, a type of utterance that performs the very action it describes. Speech Act Theory's examination of Illocutionary Acts has many of the same goals as pragmatics, as outlined above.

Computational Pragmatics, as defined by Victoria Fromkin, concerns how humans can communicate their intentions to computers with as little ambiguity as possible. That process, integral to the science of natural language processing (seen as a sub-discipline of artificial intelligence), involves providing a computer system with some database of knowledge related to a topic and a series of algorithms, which control how the system responds to incoming data, using contextual knowledge to more accurately approximate natural human language and information processing abilities. Reference resolution, how a computer determines when two objects are different or not, is one of the most important tasks of computational pragmatics.

Formalization
There has been a great amount of discussion on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics and there are many different formalizations of aspects of pragmatics linked to context dependence. Particularly interesting cases are the discussions on the semantics of indexicals and the problem of referential descriptions, a topic developed after the theories of Keith Donnellan. A proper logical theory of formal pragmatics has been developed by Carlo Dalla Pozza, according to which it is possible to connect classical semantics (treating propositional contents as true or false) and intuitionistic semantics (dealing with illocutionary forces). The presentation of a formal treatment of pragmatics appears to be a development of the Fregean idea of assertion sign as formal sign of the act of assertion.

Rational Speech Act and Probabilistic Pragmatics
Over the past decade, many probabilistic and Bayesian methods have become very popular in the modelling of pragmatics, of which the most successful framework has been the Rational Speech Act framework developed by Noah Goodman and Michael C. Frank, which has already seen much use in the analysis of metaphor, hyperbole and politeness. In the Rational Speech Act, listeners and speakers both reason about the other's reasoning concerning the literal meaning of the utterances, and as such, the resulting interpretation depends, but is not necessarily determined by the literal truth conditional meaning of an utterance, and so it uses recursive reasoning to pursue a broadly Gricean co-operative ideal.

In the most basic form of the Rational Speech Act, there are three levels of inference; Beginning from the highest level, the pragmatic listener $$L_1$$ will reason about the pragmatic speaker $$S_1$$, and will then infer the likely world state $$s$$ taking into account that $$S_1$$ has deliberately chosen to produce utterance $$u$$, while $$S_1$$ chooses to produce utterance $$u$$ by reasoning about how the literal listener $$L_0$$ will understand the literal meaning of $$u$$ and so will attempt to maximise the chances that $$L_0$$ will correctly infer the world state $$s$$. As such, a simple schema of the Rational Speech Act reasoning hierarchy can be formulated for use in a reference game such that:

$$\begin{align} & L_1 : P_{L_1}(s|u) \propto P_{S_1}(u|s) \cdot P(s) \\ & S_1 : P_{S_1}(u|s) \propto \exp(\alpha U_{S_1}(u;s)) \\ & L_0 : P_{L_O}(s|u) \propto [\![ u ]\!](s) \cdot P(s) \end{align}$$

In literary theory
Pragmatics (more specifically, Speech Act Theory's notion of the performative) underpins Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity. In Gender Trouble, they claim that gender and sex are not natural categories, but socially constructed roles produced by "reiterative acting."

In Excitable Speech they extend their theory of performativity to hate speech and censorship, arguing that censorship necessarily strengthens any discourse it tries to suppress and therefore, since the state has sole power to define hate speech legally, it is the state that makes hate speech performative.

Jacques Derrida remarked that some work done under Pragmatics aligned well with the program he outlined in his book Of Grammatology.

Émile Benveniste argued that the pronouns "I" and "you" are fundamentally distinct from other pronouns because of their role in creating the subject.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari discuss linguistic pragmatics in the fourth chapter of A Thousand Plateaus ("November 20, 1923--Postulates of Linguistics"). They draw three conclusions from Austin: (1) A performative utterance does not communicate information about an act second-hand, but it is the act; (2) Every aspect of language ("semantics, syntactics, or even phonematics") functionally interacts with pragmatics; (3) There is no distinction between language and speech. This last conclusion attempts to refute Saussure's division between langue and parole and Chomsky's distinction between deep structure and surface structure simultaneously.

Significant works and concepts

 * J. L. Austin's How To Do Things With Words
 * Paul Grice's cooperative principle and conversational maxims
 * Brown and Levinson's politeness theory
 * Geoffrey Leech's politeness maxims
 * Levinson's presumptive meanings
 * Jürgen Habermas's universal pragmatics
 * Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's relevance theory
 * Dallin D. Oaks's Structural Ambiguity in English: An Applied Grammatical Inventory
 * Vonk, Hustinx, and Simon's 1992 journal article "The use of referential expressions in structuring discourse"
 * Nancy Bauer's How To Do Things With Pornography
 * Piotr Gmytrasiewicz, "How to Do Things with Words: A Bayesian Approach", https://www.jair.org/index.php/jair/article/view/11951/26599.

title: Pragmatics


text:
User:Pietro speroni

http://www.pietrosperoni.it

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Pietro speroni


text:
Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”

Born into a Milanese noble family with close ties to the artistic world, Visconti began his career in France as an assistant director to Jean Renoir. His 1943 directorial debut, Ossessione, was condemned by the Fascist regime for its unvarnished depictions of working-class characters, but is today renowned as a pioneering work of Italian cinema, generally regarded as the first neorealist film. During World War II, he served in the anti-fascist resistance, and afterwards was active in left-wing politics.

Visconti’s best-known films include Senso (1954) and The Leopard  (1963), which are historical melodramas adapted from Italian literary classics, the gritty drama Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and his "German Trilogy" – The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973). He was also an accomplished director of operas and stage plays, both in Italy and abroad, and held a close association with La Scala in his hometown of Milan.

Visconti received several notable accolades, including both the Palme d'Or (for The Leopard) and the Golden Lion (for 1965’s Sandra), the latter out of five total nominations. He won the David di Donatello for Best Director twice and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Director four times, and was both an Oscar and BAFTA Award nominee. Six of Visconti’s films are on the list of 100 Italian films to be saved. Many of his works are regarded as highly-influential to future generations of filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Early life

Luchino Visconti was born into a prominent noble family in Milan, one of seven children of Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone, Duke of Grazzano Visconti and Count of Lonate Pozzolo, and his wife Carla (née Erba, heiress to Erba Pharmaceuticals). He was formally known as Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone, and his family is a branch of the Visconti of Milan where they ruled from 1277 to 1447, initially as lords, then as dukes.

He grew up in the Milanese family seat, the Palazzo Visconti di Modrone in Via Cerva, as well as on the family estate, Grazzano Visconti Castle near Vigolzone. He was baptized and raised in the Roman Catholic church. After his parents separated in the early 1920s, his mother moved with her younger children, including him, to her own house in Milan, as well as to her summer residence, Villa Erba in Cernobbio on Lake Como. The father, as chamberlain of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, also owned a villa in Rome that Luchino later inherited and lived in for decades.

In his early years, he was exposed to art, music and theatre: The Palazzo Visconti di Modrone in Milan, where he grew up, had its own small private theatre and the children participated in its performances. The family also had their own box in the La Scala opera house. Luchino studied cello with the Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo de Paolis (1890–1965) and met the composer Giacomo Puccini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio. Visconti found literature by reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time, later a lifelong film project that he never realized. Before he started his film career, he was passionate about training racehorses in his own stable. He was engaged to Princess Irma of Windisch-Graetz, but this raised concerns with her father, Prince Hugo, and Visconti broke the engagement off in 1935.

Wartime resistance activity
During World War II, Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party, which he considered to be the only effective opponent of Italian Fascism. While he had, in his early years, been impressed by such aesthetic aspects of the solemn parades of the National Fascist Party as marching in columns in boots and uniform, he had now come to hate the Mussolini regime. He accused the bourgeoisie of treason to tyranny, and following the Badoglio Proclamation, began working with the Italian resistance. He supported the communists' partisan fight at the risk of death; his villa in Rome became a meeting place for oppositional artists.

After the king's flight in the autumn of 1943 and the intervention of the Germans, he went into hiding in the mountains, at Settefrati, under the nom de guerre Alfredo Guidi. Visconti helped English and American prisoners of war hide after they had escaped, and also gave shelter to partisans in his house in Rome, with the help of actress María Denis.

After the German occupation of Rome in April 1944, Visconti was arrested and detained by the anti-partisan Pietro Koch and sentenced to execution by firing squad. He was only saved from death by Denis' last-minute intervention. After the war, Visconti testified against Koch, who was himself convicted and executed.

Films
He began his film-making career as a set dresser on Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne (1936) through the intercession of their common friend Coco Chanel. After a short tour of the United States, where he visited Hollywood, he returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again, this time for Tosca (1941), a production that was interrupted and later completed by German director Karl Koch.

Together with fellow members of the Milanese film journal Cinema - Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis - Visconti wrote the screenplay for his first film as director: Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), one of the first examples of neorealist (involving real locations and regular people) movies and an unofficial adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The premiere of Ossessione took place at a film festival hosted by Vittorio Mussolini (son of Benito), who was the national arbiter for cinema and other arts, and the editor of Cinema. Though prior to the premiere their working relationship was positive, upon viewing the film Vittorio stormed out of the theatre exclaiming: "This is not Italy!", according to the account of Cinema group contributor Aldo Scagnetti. The film was subsequently suppressed by the fascist regime, to the extent that the first public showing of the film in Rome only occurred in May 1945.

In 1948, he wrote and directed La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga. Visconti continued working throughout the 1950s, but he veered away from the neorealist path with his 1954 film, Senso, shot in colour. Based on the novella by Camillo Boito, it is set in Austrian-occupied Venice in 1866. In this film, Visconti combines realism and romanticism as a way to break away from neorealism. However, as one biographer notes, "Visconti without neorealism is like Lang without expressionism and Eisenstein without formalism". He describes the film as the "most Viscontian" of all Visconti's films. Visconti returned to neorealism once more with Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), the story of Southern Italians who migrate to Milan hoping to find financial stability. In 1961, he was a member of the jury at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival.

Turning away from neo-realism, Visconti created an unmistakable visual language in his films from the 1960s onwards. Thanks to his unique blend of aristocratic and upper-class origins, political communist convictions and brilliant social analysis, he created masterpieces of film history in The Leopard (1963), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1972). Throughout the 1960s, Visconti's films became more personal. Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) is based on Lampedusa's novel of the same name about the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy at the time of the Risorgimento, where the change of times becomes visible in two of the main characters: Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) appears patriarchal but humane, while Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), a shrewd entrepreneur and social climber from the village, appears submissive, but foxy and brutal at the same time, a mafia-like type of the future. The tension arises from the marriage of their relatives of the next generation, combined with the fall of the old Bourbon rule and the rise of a united Italy. This film was distributed in America and Britain by Twentieth-Century Fox, which deleted important scenes. Visconti repudiated the Twentieth-Century Fox version.

It was not until The Damned (1969) that Visconti received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film, one of Visconti's better-known works, concerns a German industrialist's family which begins to disintegrate during the Nazi consolidation of power in the 1930s. The film opened to widespread critical acclaim, but also faced controversy from rating boards for its sexual content, including depictions of homosexuality, pedophilia, rape, and incest. In the United States, the film was given an X rating. The avant-garde filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder praised it as his favourite movie. Its decadence and lavish beauty are characteristic of Visconti's aesthetic − very visible also in the movie Death in Venice (1971) that adapted the daring novella Death in Venice published in 1912 by Thomas Mann.

Visconti's final film was The Innocent (1976), in which he returns to his recurring interest in infidelity and betrayal.

Theatre
Visconti was also a celebrated theatre and opera director. During the years 1946 to 1960, he directed many performances of the Rina Morelli-Paolo Stoppa Company with actor Vittorio Gassman as well as many celebrated productions of operas.

Visconti's love of opera is evident in the 1954 Senso, where the beginning of the film shows scenes from the fourth act of Il trovatore, which were filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Beginning when he directed a production at Milan's Teatro alla Scala of La vestale in December 1954, his career included a famous revival of La traviata at La Scala in 1955 with Maria Callas and an equally famous Anna Bolena (also at La Scala) in 1957 with Callas. A significant 1958 Royal Opera House (London) production of Verdi's five-act Italian version of Don Carlos (with Jon Vickers) followed, along with a Macbeth in Spoleto in 1958 and a famous black-and-white Il trovatore with scenery and costumes by Filippo Sanjust at the Royal Opera House in 1964. In 1966 Visconti's luscious Falstaff for the Vienna State Opera conducted by Leonard Bernstein was critically acclaimed. On the other hand, his austere 1969 Simon Boccanegra with the singers clothed in geometrical costumes provoked controversy.

Filmmaking style and themes
In the aftermath of World War II he became one of the founding fathers of the Italian neorealistic film movement that focused on challenging economic and conditions, and how it affected the psyche of the underclass. Visconti himself came from nobility, was highly educated and was never in financial lack. His films reflected that tension. In fact, Visconti said he felt he came from a world long ago, that of the previous (19th) century.

In the film The Leopard, he addressed the decline of an old social order and the rise of “modern times”. He did not see his opulent flashbacks as an escape into imaginary, lost worlds, but rather as the deciphering of signs. He wanted to put his finger on the signs of profound historical changes which would only become visible later. He searched world literature for relevant works to show the discrepancies between generations and their world views, as a task of realism in art. When he was accused of decadence, he recalled Thomas Mann and his way of creating art.

Personal life
In later years, Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality, though he remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. "I am a Catholic," he commented in 1971. "I was born a Catholic, I was baptized a Catholic. I cannot change what I am, I cannot easily become a Protestant. My ideas may be unorthodox, but I am still a Catholic." While his first 3-year-relationship from 1936, with the photographer Horst P. Horst, remained discreet because of the prejudices of the time, he later showed up openly in the company of his lovers, among them the director and producer Franco Zeffirelli and the actor Udo Kier. His last lover was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in Visconti's film The Damned. Berger also appeared in Visconti's Ludwig in 1973 and Conversation Piece in 1974, along with Burt Lancaster. Zeffirelli also worked as part of the crew in production design, as assistant director, and other roles in a number of Visconti's films, operas, and theatrical productions. According to Visconti's autobiography, he and Umberto II of Italy had a romantic relationship during their youth in the 1920s.

Visconti was hostile to the Protests of 1968 and didn't even try to follow the movement and adopt the airs of youth, like Alberto Moravia or Pier Paolo Pasolini did (although the latter was certainly not sympathetic towards the protestors). In his view, the protesters sought change for the sake of destruction without building something new. Disgusted, he looked at the young people in their enthusiasm, outbursts of anger, parties and tumults, their abstract speeches, their juggling with Mao, Marx, and Che Guevara. They saw him as a symbol of reaction, a member of the mandarin caste. The emerging radical-left terrorism in Italy frightened him and made him fear the rise of a new fascism.

Health issues and death
Visconti smoked 120 cigarettes a day. He suffered a serious stroke in 1972, but continued to smoke heavily. He died in Rome of another stroke at the age of sixty-nine on 17 March 1976. There is a museum dedicated to the director's work in Ischia where he had his summer residence La Colombaia.

Other films

 * , documentary, 1945
 * Appunti su un fatto di cronaca, short film, 1951
 * Siamo donne (We, the Women), 1953, episode Anna Magnani
 * Boccaccio '70, 1962, based on the episode Il lavoro in Boccaccio's Decameron
 * Le streghe (The Witches), 1967, episode La strega bruciata viva
 * , TV movie, 1970

title: Luchino Visconti


text:
Cesare Zavattini

Cesare Zavattini (20 September 1902 – 13 October 1989) was an Italian screenwriter and one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema.

Biography
Born in Luzzara near Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, on 20 September 1902, Zavattini studied law at the University of Parma, but devoted himself to writing. He started his career in Gazzetta di Parma. In 1930 he relocated to Milan, and worked for the book and magazine publisher Angelo Rizzoli. After Rizzoli began producing films in 1934, Zavattini received his first screenplay and story credits in 1936. At the same time he was writing the plot for the comic strip Saturn against the Earth with Federico Pedrocchi (script) and Giovanni Scolari (art) for I tre porcellini (1936–1937) and Topolino (1937–1946).

In 1935, he met Vittorio De Sica, beginning a partnership that produced some twenty films, including such masterpieces of Italian neorealism as Sciuscià (1946), Ladri di biciclette (1948), Miracolo a Milano (1951), and Umberto D. (1952).

In 1952, Zavattini gave an interview to The Italian Film Magazine 2, republished in English as "Some Ideas on the Cinema". The thirteen points Zavattini outlined are widely regarded as his manifesto to Italian neorealism.

In his only experience in Hollywood, Zavattini wrote the screenplay for The Children of Sanchez (1978) based on Oscar Lewis's book of the same title, a classic study of a Mexican family. At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded the Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema. In 1983 he was a member of the jury at the 13th Moscow International Film Festival.

Zavattini died in Rome on 13 October 1989.

Directors
Among the many celebrated directors of Italian and international cinema Zavattini worked with in his more than 80 films are:
 * Vittorio De Sica,
 * Michelangelo Antonioni,
 * Hall Bartlett,
 * Alessandro Blasetti,
 * Mauro Bolognini,
 * Mario Camerini,
 * René Clément,
 * Federico Fellini,
 * Pietro Germi,
 * Alberto Lattuada,
 * Mario Monicelli,
 * Elio Petri,
 * Dino Risi,
 * Roberto Rossellini,
 * Mario Soldati
 * Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
 * Luchino Visconti.

Also, In the short story "La Santa", by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez a character is named after Zavattini. In the story, the character is a teacher of cinema.

Selected filmography

 * I'll Give a Million (1936)
 * The Dance of Time (1936)
 * Saint John, the Beheaded (1940)
 * A Woman Has Fallen (1941)
 * Don Cesare di Bazan (1942)
 * Before the Postman (1942)
 * Fourth Page (1942)
 * The Children Are Watching Us (1943)
 * Piruetas Juveniles / Romanzo a passo di danza (1943)
 * The Gates of Heaven (1945)
 * Rome, Free City (1946)
 * Biraghin (1946)
 * Un giorno nella vita (1946)
 * The Testimony (1946)
 * Sciuscià (1946)
 * The Unknown Man of San Marino (1946)
 * Crime News (1947)
 * The Great Dawn (1947)
 * Sperduti nel buio (1947)
 * Ladri di biciclette (1948)
 * Twenty Years (1949)
 * Miracolo a Milano (1951)
 * Mamma Mia, What an Impression! (1951)
 * Umberto D. (1952)
 * Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954)
 * L'oro di Napoli ("The Gold of Naples", 1954)
 * La Ciociara ("Two Women", 1960)
 * I sequestrati di Altona ("The Condemned of Altona", 1962)
 * L'isola di Arturo ("Arturo's Island", 1962)
 * Ieri, oggi e domani ("Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", 1963)
 * Un monde nouveau (1966)
 * Caprice Italian Style (1968)
 * I girasoli ("Sunflower", 1970)
 * Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini ("The Garden of the Finzi-Continis", 1970)
 * Una breve vacanza ("A Brief Vacation", 1973)
 * Lo chiameremo Andrea (1975)

title: Cesare Zavattini


text:
Talk:Les Fleurs du mal/Archive 1

Anyone know what this is or why it is here? --rmhermen
 * Well, it's a matter of culture to know what it is -- since it's one of
 * the most important works of literary Symbolism. But I agree to the fact
 * that it has no business in an encyclopedia. So please delete it and put
 * some description instead. By the way, is this really public domain?
 * Daniel

What's left of this really doesn't say much about the subject. Copyright is not an issue here since we are talking about something originally published in 1861. More extended comments about this poem, which is indeed a major work in French Literature, would be more in keeping with what Wikipedia is about. I'm personally opposed to cluttering Wikipedia with long texts of easily available works; this view applies just as well to Origin of Species and Macbeth that are currently in the project. They should all be treated equally. Nevertheless, if it is accepted that they all stay the Baudelaire text should probably be moved to the French language Wikipedia. Eclecticology

title: Talk:Les Fleurs du mal/Archive 1


text:
Sergio Tofano

Sergio Tòfano (20 August 1886 – 28 October 1973) was an Italian actor, theatre director, playwright, scene designer and illustrator.

Tofano was born in Rome. In 1909, he made his first appearance on stage with Ermete Novelli, then joined Virgilio Talli's company (1913–23). He soon specialized as a comic actor, giving his role a new elegance and complexity. He worked with other famous actors and directors: Dario Niccodemi (1924–27); Luigi Almirante and Giuditta Rissone (1927–30), Elsa Merlini, Vittorio De Sica, Evi Maltagliati, Gino Cervi etc. During those years, he made his famous performances as Doctor Knock in Jules Romains' play, and as Professor Toti in Luigi Pirandello's Pensaci, Giacomino!. He also led important theatrical firms.

After the Second World War, he worked with the most important directors, like Luchino Visconti and Giorgio Strehler.

In 1917 Tofano invented, for a children's magazine, Il Corriere dei Piccoli, a famous character, Signor Bonaventura, whose adventures lasted for more than forty years. He used to sign as Sto. He wrote and illustrated several children's books and illustrated The Chess Set in the Mirror by Massimo Bontempelli.

Partial filmography

 * Tigrana (1916, dir. by Edouard Micheroux de Dillon)
 * The Private Secretary (1931, dir. by Goffredo Alessandrini) - Otello, l'usciere
 * Your Money or Your Life (1932, dir. by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) - Daniele
 * The Telephone Operator (1932, dir. by Nunzio Malasomma) - Bàttigo - the tenor
 * Paprika (1933, dir. by Carl Boese) - Checco
 * The Girl with the Bruise (1933, dir. by E. W. Emo)
 * Seconda B (1934, dir. by Goffredo Alessandrini) - Professore Monti
 * Lohengrin (1936, dir. by Nunzio Malasomma) - Giulio
 * The Two Misanthropists (1937, dir. by Amleto Palermi) - Cosimo Bertelet
 * Tonight at Eleven (1938, dir. by Oreste Biancoli) - Il colonnello Muffon
 * Jeanne Doré (1938, dir. by Mario Bonnard) - Fanard
 * Inventiamo l'amore (1938, dir. by Camillo Mastrocinque) - Borghetti
 * The Sons of the Marquis Lucera (1939, dir. by Amleto Palermi) - Vigna
 * Eravamo sette sorelle (1939, dir. by Mario Mattoli) - Antonio, il maggiordomo
 * Le sorprese del divorzio (1939, dir. by Guido Brignone) - Fernand Corbulon
 * Father For a Night (1939, dir. by Mario Bonnard) - Edmondo Fontages
 * Follie del secolo (1939, dir. by Amleto Palermi) - Il barone Giorgio
 * The Silent Partner (1939) - L'affaristo in borsa
 * Validità giorni dieci (1940, dir. by Camillo Mastrocinque) - Maurizio
 * Giù il sipario (1940, dir. by Raffaello Matarazzo) - Il capocomico
 * La granduchessa si diverte (1940, dir. by Giacomo Gentilomo) - Il principe
 * Una famiglia impossibile (1940, dir. by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) - Il maggiordomo
 * Idyll in Budapest (1941, dir. by Giorgio Ansoldi) - Altezza
 * Il signore a doppio petto (1941, dir. by Flavio Calzavara) - Il signore Bisaccia
 * Cenerentola e il signor Bonaventura (1941, anche soggetto e regia) - Il dottore (uncredited)
 * Se io fossi onesto (1942, dir. by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) - Vittorio, il maggiordomo
 * Disturbance (1942, dir. by Guido Brignone) - Antonio, padre di Silvia
 * Souls in Turmoil (1942, dir. by Giulio Del Torre) - Perego
 * La guardia del corpo (1942, dir. by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) - L'avvocato Paolo, suo marito
 * Fourth Page (1943, dir. by Nicola Manzari) - Il professore naturalista
 * Gian Burrasca (1943, anche regia) - Il maestro di pianoforte
 * Il fidanzato di mia moglie (1943, dir. by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) - Il giudice Ernesto Torriani
 * La maschera e il volto (1943, dir. by Camillo Mastrocinque) - Cirillo
 * Il cavaliere del sogno (1947, dir. by Camillo Mmastrocinque) - Il maestro Zingarelli
 * Fabiola (1949, dir. by Alessandro Blasetti) - Luciano
 * Abbiamo vinto! (1951, dir. by Robert A. Stemmle) - Temistocle Leoni
 * Napoleon (1951, dir. by Carlo Borghesio) - Vignon
 * Altri tempi (1952, dir. by Alessandro Blasetti) - Nonno di Guido (segment "L'idillio")
 * La Fiammata (1952, dir. by Alessandro Blasetti) - Belmont
 * Guilt Is Not Mine (1952, dir. by Giuseppe Masini) - Prof. Valli
 * Puccini (1953, dir. by Carmine Gallone) - Giulio Ricordi
 * The Country of the Campanelli (1954, dir. by Jean Boyer) - Dott. Pott
 * House of Ricordi (1954, dir. by Carmine Gallone) - Cesarini Sforza
 * Cardinal Lambertini (1954, dir. by Giorgio Pastina) - Canonico Peggi
 * La bella di Roma (1955, dir. by Luigi Comencini) - Agostino
 * Andrea Chenier (1955, dir. by Clemente Fracassi) - Luigi Chénier
 * Porta un bacione a Firenze (1956, dir. by Camillo Mastrocinque) - Giovanni
 * Io, Caterina (1957)
 * La vita degli altri (1957) - Linari
 * Dreams in a Drawer (1957, dir. by Renato Castellani) - Lucia's Father
 * Il bacio del sole (Don Vesuvio) (1958)
 * Il re di Poggioreale (1961, dir. by Duilio Coletti) - Il contente Pignatelli
 * La costanza della ragione (1964, dir. by Pasquale Festa Campanile) - Don Bonifazi
 * Napoleone a Firenze (1964)
 * Il padre di famiglia (1967, dir. by Nanni Loy) - General
 * Partner (1968, dir. by Bernardo Bertolucci) - Professor Petrushka
 * Toh, è morta la nonna! (1969, dir. by Mario Monicelli) - The Grandfather
 * Contestazone generale (1970, dir. by Luigi Zampa) - Bishop
 * La colonna infame (1973, dir. by Nelo Risi) - Il presidente del senato
 * Rugantino (1973, dir. by Pasquale Festa Campanile) - Marchese Michele Sacconi

title: Sergio Tofano


text:
1540s BC

The 1540s BC was a decade lasting from January 1, 1549 BC to December 31, 1540 BC.

Events and trends

 * History of ancient Israel and Judah—earliest date for Ahmose I founding the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.

Significant people

 * 1545 BC—Ahmose I, Pharaoh and founder of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, dies, according to the High Chronology.

title: 1540s BC


text:
Seven hills of Rome

The seven hills of Rome (Septem colles/montes Romae, Sette colli di Roma ) east of the river Tiber form the geographical heart of Rome, within the walls of the city.

Hills
The seven hills are:

 * Aventine Hill (Latin: Collis Aventinus; Italian: Aventino)
 * Caelian Hill (Collis Caelius, originally the Mons Querquetulanus; Celio)
 * Capitoline Hill (Mons Capitolinus; Campidoglio)
 * Esquiline Hill (Collis Esquilinus; Esquilino)
 * Palatine Hill (Collis or Mons Palatinus; Palatino)
 * Quirinal Hill (Collis Quirinalis; Quirinale)
 * Viminal Hill (Collis Viminalis; Viminale)

The Vatican Hill (Latin Collis Vaticanus) lying northwest of the Tiber, the Pincian Hill (Mons Pincius), lying to the north, the Janiculan Hill (Latin Janiculum), lying to the west, and the Sacred Mount (Latin Mons Sacer), lying to the northeast, are not counted among the traditional Seven Hills, being outside the boundaries of the most ancient part of Rome.

Separate also are the seven hills associated with the Septimontium, a proto-urban festival celebrated by the residents of the seven communities associated with the hills or peaks of Rome. These were the Oppius, Palatium, Velia, Fagutal, Cermalus, Caelius, and Cispius. These are sometimes confused with the traditional seven hills.

History
Tradition holds that Romulus and Remus founded the original city on the Palatine Hill on 21 April 753 BC, and that the seven hills were first occupied by small settlements that were not grouped. The seven hills' denizens began to interact, which began to bond the groups. The city of Rome, thus, came into being as these separate settlements acted as a group, draining the marshy valleys between them and turning them into markets (fora in Latin). Later, in the early 4th century BC, the Servian Walls were constructed to protect the seven hills.

In modern Rome, five of the seven hills—the Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Quirinal, and Viminal Hills—are now the sites of monuments, buildings, and parks. The Capitoline Hill is the location of Rome's city hall, and the Palatine Hill is part of the main archaeological area.

A smaller area was covered by the seven peaks associated with the festival of the Septimontium: the Cispian Hill (Cispius Mons), Oppian Hill (Oppius Mons), and Fagutal Hill (Fagutalis Mons), three spurs of the Esquiline Hill, along with the Palatium and Cermalus, the peaks of the Palatine Hill, the Velian Hill, a ridge joining the Palatine and Oppian Hills, and the Caelian Hill.

Other cities with seven hills
Sheffield, Istanbul, Lisbon, Providence and the Massachusetts cities of Worcester, Somerville, and Newton are also said to have been built on seven hills, following the example of Rome.

In the New Testament
In the Book of Revelation, the Whore of Babylon sits on "seven mountains", often understood by Christians as the seven hills of Rome and a reference to the pagan Roman Empire. Protestants later associated them with the Catholic Church (as the Pope is patriarch of Rome).

In modern literature
In a 2019 interview Lindsey Davis revealed her plan to set a series of books on the seven hills of Rome, now accomplished with the publication of A Capitol Death, seventh in the Flavia Albia series which began with The Ides of April, set on the Aventine Hill.

title: Seven hills of Rome


text:
Dąbrowa Górnicza

Dąbrowa Górnicza (, German: Dombrowa) is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, southern Poland, near Katowice and Sosnowiec. It is located in eastern part of the Silesian Voivodeship, on the Czarna Przemsza and Biała Przemsza rivers (tributaries of the Vistula, see Przemsza).

Even though Dąbrowa Górnicza belongs to the historic province of Lesser Poland, it now is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (since 1999), and previously (1975–1998) it was in Katowice Voivodeship. Dąbrowa Górnicza is one of the cities of the Katowice urban area (2.7 million people), and within the greater Katowice-Ostrava metropolitan area (5.2 million people). The population of the city itself as of December 2021 is 116,971.

Locality and districts
Dąbrowa Górnicza is the largest city of the province and the 9th largest in Poland in terms of territory, with total area of 188 square kilometers. The city lies among the hills, at 258 to 390 meters above sea level. Dąbrowa Górnicza borders Będzin County, Zawiercie County, Olkusz County and the city of Sosnowiec. At the same time it borders the cities and towns of Sosnowiec, Będzin, Siewierz and Sławków.

The place name Dąbrowa, is derived from the Polish word dąb (oak), and denotes an oak grove, as the territory of the original village is believed to have been covered by oak forests during the early days of its existence. From the 19th century, the settlement grew to be an important coal-mining center, and its name was supplemented by the adjective Górnicza (which refers to mining) in 1919, to distinguish it from such towns, as Dąbrowa Tarnowska and Dąbrowa Białostocka.

Districts
The city is divided into several districts: Antoniów, Błędów, Bugaj, Centrum, Dziewiąty, Gołonóg, Korzeniec, Kuźniczka Nowa, Łazy Błędowskie, Łęka, Łęknice, Łosień, Marianki, Mydlice, Okradzionów, Piekło, Ratanice, Reden, Sikorka, Strzemieszyce Małe, Strzemieszyce Wielkie, Trzebiesławice, Trzydziesty, Tucznawa, Ujejsce, Ząbkowice. From 1977–1984, the town of Sławków was a district of Dąbrowa Górnicza.

History
In the first half of the 18th century, Dąbrowa was a small agricultural settlement belonging to the Będzin parish of Lesser Poland's Kraków Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown. It was first mentioned on 25 July 1726, when the parish priest of Holy Trinity Church at Będzin noted a woman named Anna Lisowa from Dąbrowa. At the 1787 census of the Archdiocese of Kraków, the settlement numbered 184 inhabitants.

The districts of Dąbrowa, which for centuries had comprised separate villages, are much older. Trzebieszowice was first mentioned in the 12th century; Błędów was mentioned by Bishop of Kraków Iwo Odrowąż in the year 1220; Strzemieszyce and Ujejsce were mentioned in the 14th century; Gołonóg in the 15th century; and Ząbkowice was described by Polish historian Jan Długosz in the 15th century.

After the Third Partition of Poland (1795), Dąbrowa was annexed by Prussia and incorporated into its newly formed province of New Silesia. The Prussians discovered rich deposits of coal here and the first coal mine was established by Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden in 1796. In 1799, first detailed map of this area was created, on which a settlement called Stara Dąbrowa is presented. It was located along a road from Kraków to Upper Silesia. The coal mine established by von Reden attracted workers, and a settlement was soon established around it.

In 1807, Dąbrowa was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw. After the duchy's dissolution in 1815, it became part of Russian-controlled Congress Poland. In 1846, the Cieszkowski Coal Mine was opened, named after Józef Cieszkowski. The Zinc Plant Konstanty operated as early as 1823, and the Huta Bankowa steel works, which is still in operation, was built in Dąbrowa Górnicza in 1834.

The first primary school was opened in 1820, and first Roman Catholic church of St. Alexander was built in the 1870s.

During the January Uprising, in February 1863, Dąbrowa was captured by Polish insurgents after their victory in the Battle of Sosnowiec nearby.

In 1909, the gmina of Dąbrowa Górnicza was established by Tsarist authorities. Even though its population reached 30,000, the Russians were reluctant to grant Dąbrowa town charter, so it remained a village until 18 August 1916, when Austrian authorities, which during World War I occupied southern part of Congress Poland, agreed to establish the town. After the war, in 1918, Poland regained independence and control of the city. 15 local Polish boy scouts were killed in fights for Polish independence in 1914–1920. In the Second Polish Republic, Dąbrowa belonged to Kielce Voivodeship.

During World War II
In September 1939, in the beginning of World War II, the city was invaded by Germany, and shortly afterwards the German Einsatzgruppe I operated in the city and committed various crimes against the Polish population. Also in September 1939, Wehrmacht troops carried out a massacre of 14 Polish boy scouts from nearby villages in the present-day district of Tucznawa. Poles from Dąbrowa Górnicza were among the victims of massacres committed by the Germans in other places, including Sosnowiec on September 4, 1939 and Celiny on June 4, 1940. Under German occupation the city was annexed directly to Germany, and included within the Upper Silesia Province. At least 14 Polish policemen from Dąbrowa were murdered by the Russians in the large Katyn massacre in April–May 1940. Further executions of Poles were carried out by the Germans during the war. Over 40 local Polish boy and girl scouts were killed by the Germans in various places, including the Auschwitz concentration camp and during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and over 60 local miners were also murdered in Auschwitz. In October 1941, the occupiers expelled over 100 Poles, who were then sent to forced labour either to Germany or to various factories in the region, while their houses were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. The Germans also operated the E513 and E543 forced labour subcamps of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp at the local coal mine. More than 4000 local Jews were enclosed in a ghetto, and later murdered in death camps. German occupation ended in 1945.

Together with all of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, the city was transferred to Katowice Voivodeship after World War II, in 1945. In 1968, the local church of Saint Mary of the Angels was visited by the Primate of Poland Stefan Wyszyński and cardinal Karol Wojtyła (future Pope John Paul II).

The 1970s saw the construction of the Katowice Steelworks, which is nowadays the biggest steel producing plant in Poland, after privatization owned by ArcelorMittal. In the 1970s the town expanded territorially and economically. In 1975 and 1977 the neighboring localities of Strzemieszyce Małe, Strzemieszyce Wielkie, Ząbkowice and others became suburbanized. The population of Dąbrowa Górnicza reached its peak in 1982 with 152,373 inhabitants. In 1984, the neighboring settlements of Marianki and Ratanice were included within the city limits of Dąbrowa Górnicza as new districts.

In the 1990s, all local coal mines were closed, because of lack of coal. The oldest part of the town Reden still exists. In 1993, the neighboring settlement of Trzebiesławice was also included within the city limits as a new district.

Education

 * Silesian Technical University, Faculty of Chemistry, Industrial and Environmental Chemistry course
 * WSB University known as Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu w Dąbrowie Górniczej prior to 2018
 * Wyższa Szkoła Planowania Strategicznego

Transport

There are many important routes crossing in Dąbrowa Górnicza. These include expressway S1 and national road 94. Expressway S1 is a direct connection to motorway A4 and to Katowice International Airport.

Also Dąbrowa Górnicza has rich railway network access including Warsaw-Katowice line (VI Pan-European corridor) and nearby Broad Gauge Metallurgy Line terminal in Sławków. The rail network is very dense in the city as it is a branching point of former Warsaw-Vienna railway. There are nine rail stations within city limits: Dąbrowa Górnicza, Dąbrowa Górnicza Pogoria, Dąbrowa Górnicza Gołonóg, Dąbrowa Górnicza Ząbkowice, Dąbrowa Górnicza Sikorka, Dąbrowa Górnicza Strzemieszyce, Dąbrowa Górnicza Wschodnia, Dąbrowa Górnicza Huta Katowice, and Dąbrowa Górnicza Południowa. Express and fast trains stop at two stations: Dąbrowa Górnicza and Dąbrowa Górnicza Ząbkowice, all other stations serve local connections.

There is also a tram network, being part of Silesian Interurbans, although currently undergoing renovations in the City Centre.

Nature and Culture

In Dąbrowa there are many green areas. Total area of local lakes is over 800 hectares, there are 180 hectares of parks (0.96%) and 4100 hectares of forests (21.7%). Particularly noteworthy is the complex of Pogoria (lakes). Furthermore, part of the Eagles' Nests Landscape Park reaches the outskirts of the city.

The largest desert in Poland and in all of Central Europe, the Błędów Desert, lies within the city limits.

Among cultural institutions there are the Palace of Zagłębie Culture, City Museum Sztygarka, Ząbkowice House of Culture, Zagłębie Music Scene, Chamber Orchestra of Zagłębie, Film Center Helios, and various music and arts schools.

Sports

The city's most notable sports club is basketball team MKS Dąbrowa Górnicza, which competes in the Polish Basketball League, the country's top division. The local football clubs include Zagłębie Dąbrowa Górnicza and Unia Ząbkowice, which both compete in the lower leagues.

Notable people

 * Karol Adamiecki (1866–1933), economist, engineer
 * Aleksander Zawadzki (1899–1964), head of state of Poland in 1952–1964
 * Jerzy Pławczyk (1911–1989), athlete, competed at 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics
 * Edward Babiuch (1927–2021), communist political figure
 * Zdzisław Marchwicki (1927–1977), serial killer
 * Kazimierz Imieliński (1929–2010), physician and father of Polish sexology
 * Sobiesław Zasada (born 1930), rally driver, businessman
 * Janusz Gajos (born 1939), actor
 * Jerzy Janikowski (1952–2006), Olympic fencer
 * Dawid Podsiadło (born 1993), singer
 * Maja Chwalińska (born 2001), tennis player

Twin towns – sister cities
Dąbrowa Górnicza is twinned with:

 * 🇺🇦 Alchevsk, Ukraine
 * 🇷🇴 Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Romania
 * 🇷🇴 Mediaș, Romania
 * 🇨🇿 Studénka, Czech Republic

title: Dąbrowa Górnicza


text:
Mortadella

Mortadella is a large Italian sausage or luncheon meat (salume, ) made of finely hashed or ground cured pork, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat (principally the hard fat from the neck of the pig). It is traditionally flavoured with peppercorns, but modern versions can also contain pistachios or, less commonly, myrtle berries. The sausage is then cooked.

The best-known version of mortadella is Mortadella Bologna PGI, but other varieties are found across Italy, including some made of other meats.

Etymology
The origin of the name mortadella is debated. One theory derives the name from the Latin word mortarium (mortar), traditionally used in pounding the meat to produce the sausage. This theory, proposed by Giancarlo Susini, professor of ancient history in the University of Bologna, relies on two funerary steles kept in the Archaeological Museum of Bologna, believed to pertain to the same monument, one showing a herd of piglets and the other a mortar and pestle.

Another theory, introduced by Ovidio Montalbani in the 17th century, derives the name from a Roman sausage flavoured with myrtle berries that Romans called farcimen myrtatum or farcimen murtatum (myrtle sausage). Myrtle was in fact a popular spice before pepper became available to European markets.

History

Traditionally, the pork filling was ground to a paste using a large mortar (mortaio, ) and pestle.

Mortadella originated in Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna. Anna Del Conte (The Gastronomy of Italy 2001) found a sausage mentioned in a document of the official body of meat preservers in Bologna dated 1376 that may be mortadella.

In Italy

 * Mortadella Bologna has protected geographical indication (PGI) status under European Union law and is the best known worldwide. The zone of production is extensive; as well as Emilia-Romagna and the neighbouring regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Marche and Tuscany, it includes Lazio and Trentino.
 * The American sausage called "bologna" is named after the mortadella Bologna.
 * Mortadella di Prato, produced in Tuscany (Prato), is also defined by an PGI. It is flavoured with pounded garlic and coloured with alchermes.
 * Mortadella di Campotosto, high in the Apennines of northern Lazio, is lightly smoked.
 * Mortadella di cavallo is made from horse meat in Albano Laziale, Lazio.

Ibero-American cultures
Mortadella is very popular in Spain and Portugal, where a variety with pepper and olives is widely consumed, especially in sandwiches. In eastern Spain, the standard mortadella is often referred to as mortadela italiana (lit. 'Italian mortadella') to differentiate it from a local variant named catalana.

Mortadella is also very popular in Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and Venezuela, thanks to the Italian immigrants who settled in these countries in the early 20th century. In these countries, it is spelt mortadela, and its recipe is quite similar to the traditional Italian, with additional peppercorns. In Peru is known as jamonada.

In Brazil, São Paulo has a very popular mortadela sandwich sold in the Municipal Market.

In Puerto Rico, "smoked mortadella" is sometimes confused with commercial salami or with cooked salami because cafeterias, panaderias, colmados and restaurants buy the bulk of whole smoked mortadella. While salami may contain pork, beef, veal and small pieces of fat uniformly distributed within the sausage, mortadella has the traditional larger chunks not so uniformly distributed. Its diameter is much larger than that of hard salami and more closely resembles salame cotto (lit. 'cooked salami') in size, hence the confusion of some people. It is smaller in diameter than the traditional mortadella Bologna because the smoking process causes some shrinkage. It is best served at room temperature to bring out its rich flavour.

Central, Southern and Eastern Europe
In Romania, a similar cold cut is also known as parizer. In Hungary, a similar product is called mortadella and a plain variety called pariser, parizer or párizsi. The term parizer is also often used in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, while parizier is used in other territories of the Balkans. It mainly differs from mortadella and similar salami in that garlic is used instead of myrtle and it does not contain pieces of fat, pistachios or olives. The classic Italian mortadella is widely sold in supermarkets along the entire Adriatic coast.

In Greece, where there is a smaller version in addition to the regular one, that variety is called or, and in Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia, the product known as mortadela is widely eaten.

In Poland, mortadela slices are sometimes dipped in batter, fried and served with potatoes and salads as a quicker (and cheaper) alternative to traditional pork cutlets.

Middle East and North Africa
In several countries, such as Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Israel, halal or kosher mortadella is sold, which is made from chicken, beef or turkey. The Siniora brand, a Palestinian brand established in Jerusalem in 1920, is the first in the region, a mortadella with sliced olives, pistachios or peppercorn. Lebanese is a famous brand that is sold around the world. The most popular brands in the GCC are Americana Group and Halwani Brothers. It is also popular in Iran, albeit usually made with beef or lamb, and called commonly, from Russian.

Pork mortadella is sold in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the UAE.

Canada and United States
A similar commercial sausage product that omits the cubes of pork fat, called "Bologna", is popular in Canada and the United States. A variety that includes olives and pimentos is called olive loaf.

Mortadella was banned from import into the United States from 1967 to 2000 due to an outbreak of African swine fever in Italy. This ban was a pivotal part of the plot of the 1971 film La mortadella starring Sophia Loren. The title for the United States release was Lady Liberty.

The ban in the United States was lifted due to a veterinary equivalency agreement that allowed countries to export products that had been shown to be disease-free as part of an overall agreement that would allow products deemed safe in the United States to be exported to the European Union.

Russia and former Soviet Union
In Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states, a very similar product is called (Докторская колбаса, lit. 'doctor's sausage'). However, this product is usually made from a mixture of beef and pork (sometimes beef and lamb or chicken for religious reasons) and does not include pieces of fat or myrtle; mortadella-style sausages with bits of fat are called and. Instead, it is flavoured with just cardamom, sometimes coriander and nutmeg, and also traditionally contains eggs and milk, which are usually absent in traditional mortadella. Unlike mortadella, contains lower amounts of fat and is high in proteins.

The name "doctor's sausage" was coined in the Soviet Union in the 1930s to refer to sausages and meat products recommended by doctors to help with undernourishment and stomach problems. During the Soviet era, it was commonly advertised as being nutritious (due to its low-fat content) and remains popular throughout former Soviet states to the present day.

Southeast Asia
Chả lụa or Vietnamese mortadella is sometimes used as an accompaniment to the Vietnamese dish bánh cuốn.

title: Mortadella