This thesis sets out to examine the thematic function of extraordinary children and animals (characters who possess a metamorphic nature, magical traits or supernatural powers) in the works of two Italian women writers of the twentieth century, Paola Masino and Anna Maria Ortese. Drawing on a range of theoretical and critical works (on the literary representation of childhood and the animal world, on women writers, on the fantastic), I argue that these characters, thanks to their Otherness, have both a constructive as well as disruptive function. On the one hand, they enable the authors to construct and develop themes, arguments, statements of poetics and references to other works and, on the other hand, they allow them to 'disrupt', challenge and unmask a society trapped in its perbenismo and dehumanising rules and ideals. Carrying out a literary reading in a historical context, the thesis explores thematic areas, such as the victimisation of weaker beings, the portrayal of a reality not perceivable by the senses, the conflicting relationship between mankind and nature and the hidden truths of modern society. The thesis will also highlight how these characters contribute to the building of a thick web of intertextual references, unconscious or voluntary echoes to other literary and artistic works, as well as of the folkloric tradition. Despite a rediscovery of Masino's writing, previous critical studies have not focused on the representation of childhood or the animal world. The more consistent critical apparatus on Ortese's oeuvre has also not looked at the contribution of extraordinary children and animals as a category, examining them individually and in isolation. This thesis is the first study to look at the two authors' extraordinary children and animals as an instrumental cohort of characters to build on themes, convey criticism and create a dialogical dimension with other works.

This thesis engages with migration literature in Italian keeping at the centre of the analysis its dissemination. I argue that this approach offers new insights into the ways migration dialogues with contemporary Italian literature - and, more generally, with contemporary Italy - with a focus on the work of translingual authors writing in Italian. The aim of this research is not to engage critically with the body of texts written by migrant writers. Rather, it focuses on sites of dissemination of this production, analysing the aims, content, and outcomes of selected case studies from this perspective. Key concerns are the public perception of migration and growing attention in the media: this thesis seeks to explore to what extent these tensions emerge when migration literature is communicated to a wide public audience and whether they affect the way in which these writers and their works are presented. This thesis considers these case studies in relation to the scholarly debate on transnational and migration literature in Italian. Thanks to the notion of 'cultural intermediary', I discuss the role and prerogatives of agents involved, for example the creative nature of their work. The case studies cover a range of time that spans from the early nineties to 2017 and they include: initiatives devoted specifically to migration literature such as series of book launches and workshops (Centro culturale Multietnico La Tenda in Milan, Seminari della Sagarana); television broadcasts (with a focus on three television broadcasts on the Italian public television channel RAI 3); educational materials for schools; and writers (Compagnia delle poete and Gabriella Ghermandi). Thanks to this approach, this thesis inserts some crucial moments of the dissemination of migration literature in Italian into a polycentric network of initiatives that uses the internet as a means to communicate and as a repository of materials. The thesis demonstrates the impact that these modes of dissemination have had not only on reception, but also on artistic practices and the production of literary texts.

No description available.

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.

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.