Loss and the other in the visionary work of Anna Maria Ortese / Vilma De Gasperin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Gasperin, Vilma, 1969-

Series:

Oxford modern languages and literature monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ortese, Anna Maria--Criticism and interpretation.

Ortese, Anna Maria.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xi unnumbered pages, 306 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

This book examines the oevre of Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998) from her first literary writings in the 1930s to her great novels in the 1990s. The analysis focusses on two interweaving core themes: loss and the Other. It begins with the shaping of personal loss of an Other following death, separation, abandonment, coupled with melancholy for life's transience as depicted in autobiographical works and in her masterpiece Il porto di Toledo. The book then addresses Ortese's literary engagement with social themes in realist stories set in post-war Naples in her collection Il mare non bagna Napoli and then explores her continuing preoccupation with socio-ethical issues, imbued with autobiographical elements, in non-realist texts, including her masterful novels L'Iguana, Il cardillo addolorato and Alonso e i visionari. The book combines theme and genre analysis, highlighting Ortese's adoption and hybridization of diverse literary forms such as poetry, the novel, the short story, the essay, autobiography, realism, fairy tales, fantasy, allegory. In her work Ortese weaves an ongoing dialogue with literary and non-literary works, through direct quotations, allusions, echoes, adoption of motifs, and topoi. The book thus explores the intertextual relationship with her sources: Leopardi, Dante, Petrarch, Manzoni, Collodi, Montale, Serao; Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Blake, Joyce, Conrad, Melville, Poe, Hawthorne; Manrique, Góngora, Quevedo, Villalón, the Cantar de mio Cid; Heine, Valéry, Puccini's Madam Butterfly, folklore, popular songs, and the Bible. Ortese shapes her literary themes against the backdrop of social, political, and economic upheavals over six decades of Italian history, culminating in an allegorical critique of modernity and a call for a renewed bond between humans and the Other. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Beginnings 19

2 Fictional Autobiography 58

3 Realist Short Stories 106

4 Fairy Tales 151

5 Animal Allegories 212.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0199673810

9780199673810

OCLC:

853310315