| Description |
1 online resource (viii, 239 pages) |
| Series |
Toronto Italian studies |
|
Toronto Italian studies.
|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-233) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Calvino, Italo -- Criticism and interpretation
|
| SUBJECT |
Calvino, Italo fast |
|
Calvino, Italo. swd |
| Subject |
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- Italian.
|
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
|
|
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9781442676343 |
|
1442676345 |
|
1281994367 |
|
9781281994363 |
|
