Gadda and Beckett : storytelling, subjectivity and fracture / Katrin Wehling-Giorgi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin, author.

Series:

Italian perspectives ; 29.

Italian perspectives ; 29

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gadda, Carlo Emilio, 1893-1973--Criticism and interpretation.

Gadda, Carlo Emilio.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989--Criticism and interpretation.

Beckett, Samuel.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.

Gadda, Carlo Emilio, 1893-1973.

Self in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

x, 164 pages ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : Legenda, 2014.

Summary:

While the writing of Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) is renowned for its linguistic and narrative proliferation, the best-known works of Samuel Beckett (1906-89) are minimalist, with a clear fondness for subtraction and abstraction. Despite these face-value differences, a close reading of the two authors' early prose writings reveals some surprisingly affinitive concerns, rooted in their profoundly troubled relationship with the literary medium and an unceasing struggle for expression of an incoherent reality and a similarly unfathomable self. Situating Gadda and Beckett at the heart of the debate of late European modernism, this study not only contests the position of 'insularity' frequently ascribed to both authors by critical consensus, but it also rethinks some of Gadda's plurilingual and macaronic features by situating them in the context of the turn-of-the-century Sprachkrise, or crisis of language. In a close analysis of the primary texts which engages with the latest findings in empirical research, Wehling-Giorgi casts fresh light on the central notions of textual and linguistic fragmentation and provides a new post-Lacanian analysis of the fractured self in Gadda's and Beckett's narrative. Italian Perspectives publishes books and collections of essays on any aspect and period of Italian literature, language, history, culture, politics, art, and media, as well as studies which take an interdisciplinary approach and are methodologically innovative. At a time of growing academic interest, the series aims to bring together different scholarly perspectives on Italy and its culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 'Lanello che non tiene': Gaps and Incoherence in Gadda's and Beckett's Poetics 9

2 In Pursuit of a 'Literature of the Unword': Narrative and Linguistic Subversion 49

3 'Back in the Caul': Matricide and Uterine Spaces 99.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-159) and index.

ISBN:

9781907975998

1907975993

OCLC:

883870276