Beyond the family romance : the legend of Pascoli / Maria Truglio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Truglio, Maria.

Series:

Toronto Italian studies

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Pascoli, Giovanni, 1855-1912--Criticism and interpretation.

Pascoli, Giovanni.

Pascoli, Giovanni, 1855-1912.

Psychology and literature.

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.

Freud, Sigmund.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

viii, 203 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2007]

Language Note:

Some text in Italian.

Summary:

Many critics have described Pascoli's poetry as a kind of evocation of lost, infantile, or, more precisely, 'primary' experiences. Descriptive terms such as 'infantile regression,' 'primordial drive,' 'Edenic desire,' and 'return to the maternal womb' regularly appear in the criticism, but the profoundly ambivalent and conflicted nature of this nostalgia has not been sufficiently emphasized. Though Pascoli celebrates the purity of the child's vision and claims that such vision is the very heart of all true poetry, we find that in his poetic practice the return to the wonder of the fanciullino always entails a concomitant self-negation or 'auto-annullamento.' Pascoli's poetry enacts the uncanny, realizing it in both its sublime and its horrific aspects.

Contents:

Introduction: Nesting Instincts 3

1 Foreshadowing: The Scapigliati and Psychoanalysis 24

2 Returning: The Poemi conviviali and the Uncanny 57

3 Positioning Pascoli in the Fin de Siecle: The Case of Infanticide 83

4 Envisioning Childhood: Memory, Desire, Pietas, and Play 107

5 Remembering the Golden Age 135

Conclusion: Reading beyond the Family Romance 159.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780802091918

OCLC:

70777753