Italo Calvino and the compass of literature / Eugenio Bolongaro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bolongaro, Eugenio, 1959- author.

Series:

Toronto Italian Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Calvino, Italo--Criticism and interpretation.

Calvino, Italo.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Toronto, [Ontario] ; Buffalo, [New York] ; London, [England] : University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Summary:

Looking at five of Italo Calvino's often neglected early novels: The Young People of Po, The Cloven Viscount, The Baron in the Trees, The Non-Existent Knight, and The Watcher, Eugenio Bolongaro argues that these works, written between 1948 and 1963, contain a sustained meditation on the role of the intellectual and on the irreducible ethical and political dimension of literature. This meditation provides an insight into a crucial moment in Calvino's development as a writer, and allows Bolongaro to lay the groundwork for a more 'political' reading of Calvino's later work. Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature firmly situates Calvino within his historical context the cultural revival of post-World War II Italy by relating these early novels to Calvino's political and critical writings which played an important role in the cultural debates of the time. This approach provides a key to understanding Calvino's work in a new light, ably demonstrating that Calvino's full literary significance cannot be understood in isolation from the politics and cultural movements of the period. One of the few book-length English-language works on Calvino's early writings, Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literatur will prove to be an indispensable tool to Italianists and literary studies scholars.

Contents:

Calvino and Post-war Italy

Calvino and Genre

Italy at the Crossroads, 1943-1963

The Italian Resistance and the Shaping of the Post-war Italian Intellectual

Il Politecnico 1945-1947: Culture vs Politics

Officina 1955-1959: The Poetical Potential of Politics

Il Menabo 1959-1967: Commitment at Sunset

Italo Calvino: from Neo-Realism to the Fantastic

Calvino and Neo-realism

I giovani and the Limits of Neo-realism

The Cloven Viscount and the Resources of the Fantastic

The Baron in the Trees: The Utopian Moment in Calvino's Fantastic Trilogy

Cosimo's Utopia

A Finer Fantastic

Engaging the Socio-cultural Moment

The Non-Existent Knight: Obstinacy Without Illusions

Agilulfo and Ethical Subjectivity

Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will

The Watcher: The Intellectual in the Labyrinth

The Language of Paralysis

Hamlet and the Minotaur

Exorcizing the Labyrinth's Lure

Conclusion: Literature as an Ethical Project

What Is Literature Good For?

Calvino and the Parable of Contemporaneity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4426-7634-5

OCLC:

958562616