This thesis explores the function of literary genres in the production and reception of the literary text, examines the ideological significance of the generic system operative in postwar Italy, and analyzes the five novels written by Italo Calvino from 1950 to 1963. The emphasis is on the relationship between the author's ethico-political stance and his negotiations of the generic system. The first part of the study (Chapters I--III) develops the theoretical tools and historical parameters which are applied to the textual analyses carried out in the second part (Chapters IV--VII). In Chapter I the notion of literariness is examined against the background of recent criticism. The distinctiveness of the literary text is found to reside in the cognitive performance it makes possible. This performance is then analyzed relying on the categories of sense and reference developed by the theory of Possible Worlds. This leads to an examination of two strategies---realist and non-realist---for the articulation of reference, which in turn raises the issue of the role of literary genres in the dialogical interaction mediated by the text. The second chapter focuses on the producer of the text. A connection is established between the epistemic configuration of "modernity" and the emergence of a particular type of producer, namely the "intellectual," who is also the primary interlocutor of "modern" literature. This analysis is then brought to bear, via Gramsci, on the particular situation of twentieth-century intellectuals in Italy. The third chapter provides a panorama of postwar Italy, with an emphasis on the relationship between political events and cultural developments such as the emergence of neorealism as the dominant literary current. The chapters in the second part present a reading of the five novels written by Calvino between 1950 and 1963, namely: I giovani del Po, Il visconte dimezzato, Il barone rampante, Il cavaliere inesistente, and La giornata d'uno scrutatore.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.34506 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Bolongaro, Eugenio. |
| Contributors | Suvin, Darko (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001614448, proquestno: NQ36958, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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