The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism Book

Tarantism is an affliction supposedly produced by the bite of a tarantula, has been endemic in impoverished southern Italy for at least 500 years, and is cured through music and trance-dancing the famed tarentella. In his third and best known study of religion and magic in the region, Italian cultural anthropologist and ethnopsychiatrist De Martino (1908-65) presents the findings on the affliction by a team of researchers that included a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and psychologist, an ethnomusicologist, and himself. Cultural anthropologist Zinn (U. degli Studi della Basilicata) translates La terra del rimorso, published in 1961 by Il Saggiatore, Milan. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR