Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

ASPECTS OF BOUNDARY CROSSING IN THE EARLY
WORK OF ITALO CALVINO
Julia Fisahn
Fakultät für Philologie, Romanisches Seminar; Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum,
Germany
e-mail: julia.fisahn@rub.de
The topic of boundary crossing within narratological texts has always been of interest and yet
represents one of the prevailing issues in the field of Narrative Studies. In particular, the
Postmodern Italian Literature attaches much importance to cross-border arguments as
intermedial contact between literature on the one hand and photography, film and music on
the other hand. While most of the recent studies concentrating on Contemporary Italian
Literature focus on intermedial references in the literature of the so called giovani scrittori
generation, this paper seeks to outline boundary crossing in the early work of Italo Calvino.
The early work of Calvino – normally seen in strong correlation to his political involvement
in Italy's anti-war resistence movement – can be categorized at a first glance as undoubtfully
neorealistic. Aside from typical neorealistic topoi, e.g. the poetics of immediacy, another
characteristic of Calvinos debut novel Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947) consists in the
application of various narrative techniques in order to reflect the transposition of reality into
text: By doing so, Calvino's debut novel can be described as unmistakably neorealistic (if we
outline roughly the meaning of 'neorealism'), at the same time we are faced with stylistic and
narrative experiments which open the text to further questions as the immediate reference of Il
sentiero dei nidi di ragno to anti-fascistic reality.
To verify this thesis it is challenging to have a closer look at boundary crossing phenomena in
Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947), e.g. at the scene when one of the protagonists rushes up
the stairs (chapter 11). At this point it is useful to resort to concepts and approaches from the
field of Intermedial Studies:
What approaches to research can be useful for the analysis of intermedial references in the
field of Italian Literature Studies? Could it be helpful to implement methods and concepts
from other disciplines, e.g. Film and Cultural Studies? What gains and difficulties will we
come up against by trying to broaden the perspective of Literary Studies?
References:
Calvino, Italo (1993a): Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Milan: Mondadori. [1947]
Calvino, Italo (1993b): „Presentazione“, in: id.: Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Milan:
Mondadori, 5–25. [1964]
Corti, Maria (1978): „Neorealismo“, in: ead.: Il viaggio testuale. Le ideologie e strutture
semiotiche. Turin: Einaudi, 25–110.