Italo Calvino is a writer who metamorphoses, but also a highly recognizable writer, whose signature is almost a trademark, whose style is unmistakably his own. This thesis traces some of the reasons for this recognizability of the authorial image of Calvino, an image that has been produced and sculpted over time through different means and media, co-created by critics, readers and Calvino himself. Calvino’s presence in media and paratext, publishing houses and intellectual circles, journals and newspapers forms an intrinsic part of the studied material. This material is explicitly put into dialogue with critical volumes and the way academics arrive at, formulate and circulate knowledge: this enquiry into the form(ul)ation of critical discourses is a crucial part of what is explored in this dissertation. Because Calvino’s circulation is transnational, a comparison is made between the American, British and Italian reception of his works, focusing both on differences and similarities. The question as to what happens to an authorial image in translation and circulation forms a spine throughout the thesis and a conscious effort is made not to separate critics and readers, editorial and academic contexts, high and low literature, Italian and non- Italian readings. A discussion along canonical fault lines is therefore a central part of the dissertation: what has propelled Calvino to the status of ‘modern classic’? Resistance to Calvino’s canonization is discussed in order to get a better sense of the canonical negotiations that surround Calvino. The ‘essential Calvino’ that has been distilled in criticism is put alongside a range of possible, parallel ‘minor Calvini’, that have been less visible because of cultural, material or historical reasons. Ample room will be reserved for a ‘science fiction’ Calvino, who is much more visible in the Anglo-Saxon readings. Other alternative Calvini which are investigated include a feminist Calvino, a posthuman Calvino and an ecologist Calvino.

This essay analyzes poems and deconstructs binary oppositions in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. By analyzing a number of poems, the essay exemplifies how Blake not only creates binary oppositions, but how he also deconstructs them. The essay focuses on the central binary opposition of innocence and experience, but also shows different binary oppositions to further show how Blake is setting up and deconstructing binary oppositions. The essay will argue that Blake can be considered an early deconstructionist due to his use of binary oppositions, as well as Blake intentionally creates binary oppositions.

My work reads the compañero [working-class male] as allegory of the Chilean nation in a corpus of Antonio Skármeta’s fiction that portrays the convulsive years leading up to, and during the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship. I deploy an interdisciplinary methodology to expound the relationship between Skármeta’s textualisation of the writer/artist and his ideological project of allegorising the nation in the compañero. My innovative approach uses key concepts drawn from theorisations of nation, identity and gender in order to evaluate the allegorical construction and de-construction of the figure of the compañero in national discourses. My aim is to structurally theorise the compañero´s rise, climax and destitution as the hegemonic masculinity of the Chilean Socialist state. I use the work on allegory of Walter Benjamin, Lynnette Hunter and Edwin Honig, among others, in order to further refine my analytical apparatus. Within masculinities studies, I follow the concepts of gender order, power relations and hegemony from Connell, Kimmel and Foucault. To complete my analysis I also read the compañero via extant studies from Chilean specialists, particularly Manuel Antonio Garretón, Nelly Richard, José Olavarría and Sonia Montecino.

Miguel Torga (1907-1995) is a well established poet, novelist and dramatist in Portuguese literature. However, the present study demonstrates that Miguel Torga should be also considered as a major travel writer of the twentieth century, following the influences he had received from the early period of Portuguese Travel Literature, Modernism, Neo-Realism and Postmodernism in the European context. The classification of Torga as a travel writer is supported by a thoroughgoing analysis of his most representative works, such as the 'Künstlerroman' and the novel of Formation (Bildungsroman) 'The Creation of the World', the Guidebook 'Portugal', the autobiographical 'Diario, Traqo de Uniao' and the picaresque novel 'O Senhor Ventura'. By adopting a comparative study between Portuguese and Anglo-Saxon Travel Literature, this study also presents the argument that Miguel Torga is an international travel writer. Like other Anglo-Saxon travel writers mainly in the inter-war years, Torga is concerned with social and political issues. In the Portuguese setting, a similar attention to the social aspect of the journey is also reinforced in the works of Vergilio Ferreira, 'Manhã Submersa' and 'Vagão 'J'. Finally, Torga's writing proves that the Portuguese Travel Literature does not end in the late nineteenth century, but this genre survived and prospered also in the twentieth century due to innovative narrative structures and themes.

Taking Itamar Even-Zohar’s ‘polisystem theory’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘theory of the field of cultural production’ as a starting point, the objective of this research is to analyse the development of Galician theatre and the re-configuration of the literary system during the period of institutionalization of the Galician culture after Franco’s death and the coming of democracy and political autonomy. By studying the 105 Cadernos published by the Escola Dramática Galega between 1978 and 1994, which cover a wide range of literary activities, the conflicts and tensions between different models and repertoires as well as the position and the contradictions of the Escola Dramática Galega during that process are brought to light. Gonzalez Millán’s theoretical concepts of ‘literary nationalism’ and ‘national literature’ will be useful in order to analyse the role that drama had on the nation-building process in Galicia and the consequences that that fact had on the development of the system. Conclusions are also drawn concerning the determinations imposed on the development of contemporary drama by the historical subsidiary position of the Galician literary system.

Previous comparative and parallel ‘genetic criticisms’ of Flaubert and Proust have ignored the different historical underpinnings that circumscribe the act of writing. This work examines the logos of Flaubert and Proust’s work. I examine the historical specificity of A la recherche du temps perdu, in respect of the gender inflections and class-struggles of the Third French Republic. I also put forward a poetics of Flaubertian history relative to L’Education sentimentale. His historical sense and changes in historiographic methodologies all obliged Flaubert to think history differently. Flaubert problematises both history and psychology, as his characterisations repeatedly show an interrupted duality. This characterization is explicated using René Girard’s theories of psychology, action theory and mediation. Metonymic substitution perpetually prevents the satisfaction of desire and turns life into a series of failures. Mediation is taken further in Proust, and characters are sacrificed to preserve the harmony of the salon. Culture is composed not only of logos but of mythos as well: Poetry, Art, History and Religion are all analysed in this study. Flaubert’s works enact a repeated invocation and repression of the visual, most evident in the Tentation de Saint Antoine, where the symbol is occluded and the logos is lost, whilst Proust’s itinerary as a writer involves resurrecting the soul of John Ruskin and culminates in his protagonist’s initiation into the Arts. Proust culminates a series of attempts since the Realists to analyse the predicament of post-revolutionary Man. The works of the two authors show a flight from the exterior world to one of interiority, but there is no solace to be had in either Flaubert’s world of the logos or Proust’s of the mythos.

This study aims to establish whether the performance or reception of a ‘theatre of resistance’ was possible amid the abundant and popular literary theatre seen during the Occupation of France (1940-1944). Playwrights and critics have made bold claims for five plays that allegedly conveyed hostility towards the occupier or somehow encouraged the French Resistance movement. These premieres will be scrutinised by examining the plays’ scripts, the circumstances surrounding their composition, the acquisition of a performance visa, public reactions and critics’ interpretations from before and after the Liberation of August 1944. I intend to demonstrate that the extreme circumstances of war-torn Paris were largely responsible for the classification of these complex works and their authors as either pro-Resistance or pro-Collaboration, a binary opposition I will challenge. While it is understandable that certain lines or themes took on special relevance, writers would not risk attracting the attention of the German or Vichy authorities. Mythical or historical subject material was (deliberately) far removed from the situation of 1940s audiences, yet was presented in the form of ‘new’ tragedies that resonated with their preoccupations. Individual testimony confirms that certain plays provided a morale boost by reaffirming hope in the future of France.

This thesis examines constructions of corporeality in three novels by the Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda: El carrer de les Camèlies (1966), Mirall trencat (1974) and La mort i la primavera (1986), and the short stories: ‘Aquella paret, aquella mimosa’, ‘Una fulla de gerani blanc’ and ‘La meva Cristina’. The study is concerned with locating the author’s formulations of the body in relation to the Catalan socio-historical context and argues that by rendering corporeal representation problematic Rodoreda enters into dialogue with Catalonia’s own historical past, often challenging culturally specific social, sexual, political and aesthetic precepts. The thesis primarily draws on visual and spectatorship theory, urban and spatial studies and feminist analyses in order to explore the idea of the politically, culturally and gender coded body as limit or border. It covers four main areas of analysis: the idea of the body as surface, image and texture and the practices of viewing that objectify the body; the relationship between the body and domestic and urban space; the culturally and politically constructed body as limit; and the concept of the abject or open body which in Rodoreda’s literature is often the consequence of either social, visual or physical violence.

The work examines the interweavement of individual memory and historical past in Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, arguing that the genre of this ‘non-book’ can be identified with the ancient Greek notion of hypomnēmaton. The first section reads the Zibaldone as an answer to the so called ‘second printing revolution’, examining the text as the outcome of tension between the ‘library’ and Leopardi’s own writing. The second section analyses Leopardi’s use of quotations through the case study of Montesquieu’s presence in the Zibaldone, highlighting how quotations from Montesquieu shape Leopardi’s reflection on the fracture between antiquity and modernity and on the aesthetic problem of grace. The third section moves from the poem ‘Le Ricordanze’ (1829), showing how the questions challenged in the Zibaldone from a theoretical point of view (such as the relationship between individual memory and historical past, the notion of grace and the problem of making culture after the Enlightenment) are finally embodied in Leopardi’s return to poetry of 1828-29, which makes the Zibaldone-hypomnēmaton unnecessary. ‘Le Ricordanze’ stages an unmediated return of memory (mnēme) through which the hypomnēmaton is ultimately emptied of significance.

This thesis considers literary representations of religious travel in twelfth- to fourteenth-century francophone and Occitan texts. It is one of the first studies on medieval French- and Occitan-language literature to consider at length portrayals of religious travel. The research questions are, how does travel help characters and audiences access the divine? What effects does travel have on the traveller’s identity? How is travel affected by the politico-cultural background of the work? Chapter one considers the pilgrim, contrasting pilgrimage narratives with Lais. Drawing on Michael Cronin and Lawrence Venuti’s work, the author evaluates how travel engenders cultural denigration or appropriation. This appropriation reflects twelfth-century reformulations of the frontiers of the French-speaking world. Such readings suggest a remapping of north-west European areas of exchange. Chapter two addresses the hermit by evaluating versions of the Life of saints Barlaam and Josaphat. Using Brian Stock’s concepts, the author considers how textual communities in these texts imbricate translation and literary creation. Travel, translation, and literary creation work together, creating a pattern of spiritual translation which mediates the divine. However, the concept of God in these works is complex and varied. Thus the three texts may supposedly recount the same narrative, but they diverge. Chapter three considers the Crusader, by evaluating travel in a crusade chronicle and a chivalric manual. The author considers how travelling on crusade is motivated by a religious ethos, which is reshaped by the travelling it inspires. Crusading is shown to alter characters’ identities. A comparative reading demonstrates that the Crusader’s travel and military prowess are directed towards incompatible goals. Jacques Lacan’s work is used to chart how historical chronologies are subjectively rewritten. The author utilises Thomas Devaney’s ideas on cross-border interactions, demonstrating that textual incoherence is linked to encounters with non-Christians. These narratives pose questions which undermine their characters’ fanaticism.