Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature / / Eugenio Bolongaro.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Bolongaro, Eugenio,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2003
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Toronto Italian Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One. Italy at the Crossroads, 1943-1963 -- Chapter Two. Italo Calvino: From Neorealism to the Fantastic -- Chapter Three. The Baron in the Trees: The Utopian Moment in Calvino's Fantastic Trilogy -- Chapter Four. The Non-existent Knight: Obstinacy without Illusions -- Chapter Five. The Watcher: The Intellectual in the Labyrinth -- Conclusion: Literature as an Ethical Project -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index