Kafka's Italian progeny / Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ziolkowski, Saskia Elizabeth, 1979- author.

Series:

Toronto Italian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.

Italian literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Italian literature.

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924--Influence.

Kafka, Franz.

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924--Criticism and interpretation.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 302 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2020]

Summary:

"While many scholars of world literature view national literary traditions as resolved and stable, Kafka's Italian Progeny takes the fluid identity of the modern Italian tradition as an opportunity to reconsider its dimensions and influencers. Exploring a distinct but unexamined Kafkan tradition in modern Italian literature, the book both brings Italian literary works into larger debates in which and reorients the critical view of the Italian literary landscape. This book calls attention to the way Kafkan themes, narrative strategies, and formal experimentation appear in a range of Italian authors. Offering new perspectives on familiar figures, such as Italo Calvino, Italo Svevo, and Elena Ferrante, it also sheds light on some less well-known authors, including Tommaso Landolfi, Paola Capriolo, and Lalla Romano. Using diverse approaches to explore thematic, generic, historical, and cultural connections between Kafka's works and those of Italian authors, the chapters argue for a new view of Italian literature that includes talking animals, parental bonds, modernist realism, literary detective novels, and lyrical microfiction. Whereas Kafka has been mobilized in discourses on minor and world literature, this book investigates the particular nature of the Italian reception of Kafka to reveal the richness and variety of modern Italian literature."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Amerika in Italy: Kafka's Realism, Pavese, and Calvino p. 32

Kafka's Amerika in Italy p. 35

The Italian View of Kafka's Realism p. 38

Calvino's Realist Kafka p. 50

Amerika and The Path to the Spiders' Nests: Finding and Losing the Way, All Over Again p. 60

The Americas of Kafka and Pavese: Class Relations and Solitude p. 66

2 Dreams of Short Fiction after Kafka: Lalla Romano, Giorgio Manganelli, and Antonio Tabucchi p. 80

Lyrical, Short Kafka p. 81

Experimenting with Short, Short Works after Kafka p. 91

The Transformations of Romano, Manganelli, and Tabucchi p. 105

3 Processi without End: The Mysteries of Dino Buzzati and Paola Capriolo p. 126

Kafka, Detective Fiction, and Italy p. 127

The Structures of Suspense: Questions, Identity, and Home p. 139

Prisons of Analysis and the Pull of Imagination p. 152

4 Kafka's Parental Bonds: The Family as Institution in Italian Literature p. 171

The Familial Institution in Kafka and Modern Italian Literature p. 172

Svevo's A Life and Ferrante's Troubling Love: Societal Stress and the Bonds of Family p. 180

Parental Bonds in Bontempelli's The Boy with Two Mothers and Morante's Arturo's Island p. 191

5 The Human-Animal Boundary, Italian Style: Kafka's Red Peter in Conversation with Svevo's Argo, Morante's Bella, and Landolfi's Tombo p. 212

Italian Literature, Kafka, and Animal Studies p. 212

Communication across Species: The Monologues of Kafka's Red Peter and Svevo's Argo p. 219

Communication across Species: Landolfi's Châli and Tombo, Morante's Bella and Immacolatella p. 228

The Language of Animals and Dialects p. 238

Animal Bodies and Divine Presence in Morante, Landolfi, and Buzzati p. 243.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781487506308

1487506309

OCLC:

1111087879