Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

I TA L I A N S T U D I E S
Beyond the Family Romance
The Legend of Pascoli
Maria Truglio
TORONTO ITALIAN STUDIES
Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912) is one of Italy’s most
canonical and beloved poets. In Beyond the Family
Romance, Maria Truglio offers fresh insight into
the uncanny qualities of Pascoli’s domestic verse.
As suggested by the Freudian title, this study opens
a dialogue between Pascoli’s literature and Freud’s
theories, with a particular focus on each author’s
interrogation of origins. Through close readings and
historical contextualization, themes of regression,
memory, and other manifestations of ‘origins’ are
analyzed, moving Pascoli’s poetry beyond the biographical
strictures that have hitherto confined it.
Truglio’s post-structuralist readings question
the dichotomy between ‘safety within the home’
and the ‘threatening outside world,’ revealing the
ambivalences with which images of the home are
fraught in Pascoli’s poetry. In addition to the sustained
comparison with Freud’s writing, Beyond the
Family Romance explores parallels between Pascoli’s
work and such writers as Tarchetti, Boito, Poe, and
Invernizio. Rethinking the concept of the fanciullino
(‘little child’), Truglio shows that Pascoli’s poetry
enacts a symbiosis between the logic of the rational
modern adult and the mythic vision of the child.
Maria Truglio is an assistant professor in the
Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at
Pennsylvania State University.
The Novel as Investigation
Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi
Jo-Ann Cannon
TORONTO ITALIAN STUDIES
Detective fiction is a universally popular genre; stories
about the investigation of a crime by a detective
are published all over the world and in hundreds
of languages. Detective fiction provides more than
entertainment, however; it often has a great deal
to say about crime and punishment, justice and
injustice, testimony and judgment. The Novel as
Investigation examines a group of detective novels by
three important Italian writers – Leonardo Sciascia,
Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi – whose conviction
about the ethical responsibility of the writer
manifests itself in their investigative fiction.
Jo-Ann Cannon explores each writer’s denunciation
of societal ills in two complementary texts.
These investigative novels shed light on pressing
social ills, which are not particular to Italian society
of the late twentieth century but are universal in
scope: Sciascia focuses on abuses of power and the
death penalty, Maraini on violence against women,
Tabucchi on torture and police brutality. In addition,
each of these texts self-reflexively explore the
role of writing in society. Sciascia, Maraini, and
Tabucchi all use their fiction to defend the power of
the pen to address “il male del mondo.”
The Novel as Investigation will be of interest to
a broad audience of readers, including those interested
in Italian and comparative literature, Italian
social history, and cultural studies.
Jo-Ann Cannon is a professor in the Department of
Italian at the University of California, Davis.
Approx. 192 pp / 6 x 9 / December 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9191-1 / 978-0-8020-9191-8
£28.00 $45.00 E
Approx. 144 pp / 6 x 9 / August 2006
3 illustrations
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9114-8 / 978-08020-9114-7
£32.00 $50.00 E
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