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- Tell, Maria, 1971-
(författare)
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Luci e ombre : Fantastico e sovversivo nella prosa narrativa di Massimo Bontempelli
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Bearing in mind that the literary fantastic may function as a subversive mode of writing that questions the dominant society’s hierarchy of norms and values as well as its notions of truth and reality (Jackson), this dissertation studies the forms and functions of the fantastic in four narratives by Massimo Bontempelli’s (1878 – 1960). This is an argument that hitherto has not been the subject of any more thoroughgoing study by critics of this Italian author. In introducing a transgressive ideology in La scacchiera davanti allo specchio, Eva ultima and Il figlio di due madri, Bontempelli inverts and deconstructs the notions and values of the dominant society and then reconstructs an alternative hierarchy where the relationship between dominator and dominated is reversed. Phenomena such as male primacy, the adult world, culture and positivist anthropocentrism are deconstructed, while reconstruction concerns the feminine, the childlike, nature and the transcendental. This inversion of notions and values has implications outside the texts, inasmuch as the phenomena Bontempelli appreciated were in fact rejected by Italian fascist society in the 1920s and 1930s. In the fourth text, Vita e morte di Adria e dei suoi figli, the notions and values of the dominant society are still inverted but there is no reconstruction of an alternative ideology. To this extent this novel seems not only the most pessimistic of the texts examined, but also the most dialogical in a Bakhtinian sense, raising more questions than it answers and testifying to an awareness of an increasingly problematic and negative reality. As for the forms of the fantastic, two different types coexist in all four texts. On the one hand there is the luminous, exterior and substantially positive fantastic – realized in the poetics of magical realism that the author officially introduced in 1926; on the other hand, there is the dark, interiorized, terrifying and negative fantastic, akin to the fantastic of the gothic tradition. Besides emphasizing the subversive aspect of Bontempelli’s work, this dissertation shows how the originality of his use of the fantastic lies in his combination of magical realism with elements of the terrifying mode of the fantastic.
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| 2. |
- Schwartz, Cecilia, 1969-
(författare)
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Capriole in cielo : Aspetti fantastici nel racconto di Gianni Rodari
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to study the fantastic in the tales of the Italian children’s author Gianni Rodari. This analysis is grounded in the hypothesis that the fantastic is primarily characterized by two esthetic qualities, play and lightness, both of which are manifested at different levels in these texts, as well as in the relation between children and adults.As a background for the textual analysis in the present work, an introductory review is provided of previous research, followed by a historical and theoretical consideration of fantastical children’s literature, together with a study of Rodari’s own relation to the fantastic. For previous research, the results clearly indicate an arbitrary relationship to Rodari’s texts, such that the fantastic is admittedly recognized, but is often confused with the fairy-tale. However, the present review of the history of Italian fantastical literature for children indicates that Rodari is writing in a fantastical and humorous tradition that begins with Pinocchio, a tradition that is inter alia characterized by its ability to bridge the gap between children’s and adult literature. Based on theoretical definitions of the fairy-tale (Propp, Thompson, Lüthi) and the fantastic (Todorov, Rabkin, Jackson, Held), the present work presents its own model for the study of Rodari’s texts, which are also compared with the author’s own poetics, The Grammar of Fantasy.A narratological analysis of a tale with both a children’s and an adult version (in itself an example of crosswriting) demonstrates that the fantastic and the humoristic are given freer rein when Rodari is writing for children. This appears to be linked to his concept of the child as the ideal reader, a reader primarily defined by an open and unprejudiced attitude to literature, rather than by age per se. The dissertation’s study of play and lightness (lack of weight) clearly confirms the hypothesis that these elements are a major component of the fantastic in Rodari’s texts; the results nevertheless indicate that play dominates on the level of language, and lightness on that of content.One of the most important results of this dissertation is that Rodari’s texts, in addition to possessing certain stylistic characteristics, do not demonstrate any deeper similarities to fairy tales. Instead, the author’s tales share numerous characteristics with the traditional concept of the fantastic such as a clear reaction to the supernatural element, and a particular interest in both the material nature of language and existential liminal regions. At the same time, the results indicate several specific characteristics that distinguish the fantastic in Rodari from that which is written for adults, such as its explicit grounding in the child’s everyday existence and imaginative world, as well as its backgrounding of frightening aspects, with prominence instead being given to playfulness.
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| 3. |
- Tchehoff, Igor, 1972-
(författare)
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Il soggetto corporale nella narrativa di Paolo Volponi
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis offers an interpretation of three novels by Paolo Volponi (1924-1994), focusing on the representation of the human subject. The analysis shows how this representation is centred on the experiences of the body, which becomes the true subject that acts and explores the world. It is argued that this narrative strategy allows the author to develop an original account of the modern condition and contributes to the innovative character of his writing. The method employed in the study shows how the corporal subject determines the plot, shapes the text through representation of perception, and carries central narrative meanings, and is thus crucial on all the levels of the novel’s organization. In Memoriale, the problematic encounter of the subject with the new industrial reality is analyzed by focusing on the malady of the protagonist who is trapped between the countryside and the factory. This ambivalent position is seen as emblematic for the corporal subject in Volponi’s novels that is bound to nature and is a participant of history. The body emerges not only as decisive in the plot but also as the main object of writing and interpretation for the protagonist and the medical institutions. In Corporale, the protagonist loses contact with the surrounding reality; the only certainty that can be offered is in the suffering or euphoric body. The novel becomes a space where the protagonist rebels against his own historic condition and challenges the limits of the thinkable and of language, approaching the absurd. This subversion of reason is examined as a case of carnivalesque writing in Bakhtin’s sense, while the subject’s frequent states of extreme crisis are read in the light of Kristeva’s notion of abjection. The reading of Il sipario ducale is structured around the concept of chronotope, defined as a spatio-temporal interconnectedness. Each of the two chronotopes of the novel determines a particular type of corporal subject, while the ending is interpreted as the impossibility of tranquil existence outside the turmoil of history. This interpretation of Volponi’s narrative shows how by staging a subject whose body is central in the process of knowing and operating in the world, fiction both changes its character and contributes to a deeper understanding of modernity and its paradoxes.
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