Description |
1 online resource (viii, 239 pages). |
Physical Medium |
polychrome |
Description |
text file |
Series |
Toronto Italian studies
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Toronto Italian studies.
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Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-233) and index. |
Contents |
Calvino and Post-war Italy -- Calvino and Genre -- Italy at the Crossroads, 1943-1963 -- 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 -- Cloven Viscount and the Resources of the Fantastic -- Baron in the Trees: The Utopian Moment in Calvino's Fantastic Trilogy -- Cosimo's Utopia -- A Finer Fantastic -- Engaging the Socio-cultural Moment -- Non-Existent Knight: Obstinacy Without Illusions -- Agilulfo and Ethical Subjectivity -- Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will -- Watcher: The Intellectual in the Labyrinth -- 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. |
Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
Subject |
Calvino, Italo -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Calvino, Italo. |
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Criticism and interpretation. |
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Calvino, Italo. |
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Calvino, Italo -- Critique et interprétation. |
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Calvino, Italo. |
Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Other Form: |
Print version: Bolongaro, Eugenio, 1959- Italo Calvino and the compass of literature. Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, ©2003 9780802087638 (DLC) 2004268221 (OCoLC)51629764 |
ISBN |
9781442676343 (electronic book) |
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1442676345 (electronic book) |
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1281994367 |
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9781281994363 |
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0802087639 |
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9780802087638 |
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