Estienne faults the "ignorante outrecuidance" [ignorant presumptuousness] of the
Italianizing courtiers:
In this regard, one is especially drawn to such seductive masters as Barthelemy Prieur, an
Italianizing genius in the employ of the courts of Henry IV and Marie de Medicis.
His preference for traditional meters and his staunch opposition to the
Italianizing trends of his day have led some critics to classify him as a cancionero poet.
Not since Ernst Lothar's Unter anderer Sonne has, I think, a more compelling novel about South Tirol been written: the "
italianizing" project of the fascists, the miscegenation of ethnic groups, the perceived oppression of the native population by Italian settlers, but, most important, the effect of all these cultural and societal somersaults on the destiny and well-being of individual persons and families.
It does not, however, have much to do with the general subject of the book, which is the anthropological, psychoanalytical and
Italianizing critique of architecture that Rykwert has successfully and often subtly and wittily promoted, and which English architectural criticism, and the AR in particular, has been absolutely unconcerned with.
