Understanding Italo Calvino (Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature)

A master of allegory and fantasy, Italo Calvino is perhaps the most original, imaginative, and appreciated writer of post-World War II Italy. In Understanding Italo Calvino Beno Weiss analyzes the fiction, literary criticism, and international reputation of this literary innovator. Weiss highlights Calvino's fascination with folk tales, knights, social and political allegories, and science fiction. He emphasizes Calvino's effort to redefine writing and reality and his penchant for the spectrum of narrative theories including semiotics, structuralism, post-modernism, and post-structuralism. Calvino frequently broke stride with fashionable literary movements, as with the publication of his trilogy The Cloven Viscount, The Baron in the Trees, and The Nonexistent Knight and such later works as Invisible Cities, If on a winter's night a traveller, and Mr. Palomar. Weiss evaluates the early experiences-exposure to his parents' botany careers, participation in the Italian Resistance during World War II, an extended residence in Paris-that influenced this very private man. Through careful reading of Calvino's fiction and literary essays, Weiss identifies a quest to defy the malaise of life in a dehumanizing world and a desire to gain a cosmic sense of harmony as the driving forces behind Calvino's work. Understanding Italo Calvino 1 Contents 7 Editor's Preface 8 Preface 10 Acknowledgments 11 Chronology 13 Chapter One— Introduction: Calvino's Life and Circumstances 17 Notes 23 Chapter Two— A Neorealistic Path to Literary Exordium: The Path to the Nest of Spiders 25 Notes 33 Chapter Three— Fantastic and Realistic Webs of Prose 35 Ultimo viene il corvo 36 I giovani del Po 41 I racconti 43 Marcovaldo 45 Notes 52 Chapter Four— Our Ancestors: A Viscount, a Baron, and a Knight 55 The Cloven Viscount 56 The Baron in the Trees 63 The Nonexistent Knight 72 Notes 80 Chapter Five— The Speculating Intellectual at the Crossroads: Four Novellas 84 The Argentine Ant 84 A Plunge into Real Estate 88 Smog 91 The Watcher 95 Notes 102 Chapter Six— Calvino's Co[s]mic Mosaic 104 The French Connection 104 Cosmicomics 111 Notes 123 Chapter Seven— An Intellectually Playful Artifice: t zero 127 "More of Qfwfq" 128 "Priscilla" 130 "t Zero" 135 The Memory of the World 141 Notes 144 Chapter Eight— The Combinatorial Play of Narrative Possibilities: The Castle of Crossed Destinies an... 146 The Castle and the Tavern 150 Invisible Cities 161 Notes 176 Chapter Nine— Calvino's Ultimate Hypernovel: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler 183 Notes 201 Chapter Ten— Posthumously: Under the Jaguar Sun; La strada di San Giovanni 204 Under the Jaguar Sun 204 La strada di San Giovanni 214 Notes 217 Chapter Eleven— Conclusion: The Unredeeming Author: Mr. Palomar 219 Notes 229 Bibliograhy 232 Calvino's Major Works 232 Fiction 232 Essays and Other Writings 233 Posthumous Publications 234 Selected Critical Works 234 Bibliographies 234 Books 235 Articles and Chapters 236 Interviews 240 Symposia Proceedings 240 Special Issues 241 Index 242 A 242 B 242 C 242 D 244 E 244 F 244 G 245 H 245 I 245 J 245 K 245 L 245 M 246 N 246 O 246 P 246 Q 246 R 247 S 247 T 247 U 247 V 247 W 248 Z 248