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Elsa Morante's Politics of Writing

Rethinking Subjectivity, History, and the Power of Art

Edited by Stefania Lucamante - Contributions by Claude Cazalé Bérard; Sarah Carey; Flavia Cartoni; Gandolfo Cascio; Francesco Chillemi; Giovanna De Luca; Manuele Gragnolati; Thomas Harrison; Claudia Karagoz; Kenise Lyons; Gaetana Marrone; Daniele Morante; Maria Morelli; Gabrielle Orsi; Lorenzo Salvagni; Hanna Serkowska; Katrin Wehling-Giorgi; Sharon Wood; Giuliana Zagra and Saskia Ziolkowski

Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing is a collected volume of twenty-one essays written by Morante specialists and international scholars. Essays gather attention on four broad critical topics, namely the relationship Morante entertained with the arts, cinema, theatre, and the visual arts; new critical approaches to her four novels; treatment of body and sexual politics; and Morante’s prophetic voice as it emerges in both her literary works and her essayistic writings. Essays focus on Elsa Morante’s strategies to address her wide disinterest (and contempt) for the Italian intellectual status quo of her time, regardless of its political side, while showing at once her own kind of ideological commitment. Further, contributors tackle the ways in which Morante’s writings shape classical oppositions such as engagement and enchantment with the world, sin and repentance, self-reflection, and corporality, as well as how her engagement in the visual arts, theatre, and cinematic adaptations of her works garner further perspectives to her stories and characters. Her works—particularly the novels Menzogna e sortilegio (House of Liars, 1948), La Storia: Romanzo (History: A Novel, 1974) and, more explicitly, Aracoeli (Aracoeli, 1982)—foreshadowed and advanced tenets and structures later affirmed by postmodernism, namely the fragmentation of narrative cells, rhizomatic narratives, lack of a linear temporal consistency, and meta- and self-reflective processes.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 294 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-794-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-61147-796-2 • Paperback • November 2016 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

978-1-61147-795-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $57.00 • (£44.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / Gender Studies

Elsa Morante's Politics of Writing

Rethinking Subjectivity, History, and the Power of Art

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing is a collected volume of twenty-one essays written by Morante specialists and international scholars. Essays gather attention on four broad critical topics, namely the relationship Morante entertained with the arts, cinema, theatre, and the visual arts; new critical approaches to her four novels; treatment of body and sexual politics; and Morante’s prophetic voice as it emerges in both her literary works and her essayistic writings. Essays focus on Elsa Morante’s strategies to address her wide disinterest (and contempt) for the Italian intellectual status quo of her time, regardless of its political side, while showing at once her own kind of ideological commitment. Further, contributors tackle the ways in which Morante’s writings shape classical oppositions such as engagement and enchantment with the world, sin and repentance, self-reflection, and corporality, as well as how her engagement in the visual arts, theatre, and cinematic adaptations of her works garner further perspectives to her stories and characters. Her works—particularly the novels Menzogna e sortilegio (House of Liars, 1948), La Storia: Romanzo (History: A Novel, 1974) and, more explicitly, Aracoeli (Aracoeli, 1982)—foreshadowed and advanced tenets and structures later affirmed by postmodernism, namely the fragmentation of narrative cells, rhizomatic narratives, lack of a linear temporal consistency, and meta- and self-reflective processes.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 294 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-794-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-61147-796-2 • Paperback • November 2016 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

978-1-61147-795-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $57.00 • (£44.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / Gender Studies

Author

Stefania Lucamante is professor of Italian at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Stefania Lucamante
Chapter 1: Daniele Morante: “Elsa Morante’s Correspondence: A New Source for the Artist’s Biography”
Chapter 2: Giuliana Zagra: “Writing: A Lifelong Affair. Notes from the Elsa Morante Archives”

Part One: New Approaches to Morante’s Oeuvre
Chapter 3: Francesco Chillemi: “In the Realm of the Lie: The Implosion of Thought and the Monsters of Reason in Menzogna e Sortilegio”
Chapter 4: Saskia Ziolkowski: “Morante and Kafka: The Gothic Walking Dead and Talking Animals”
Chapter 5: Sarah Carey: “Elsa Morante: Envisioning History”
Chapter 6: Sharon Wood: “Excursus as Narrative Technique in La Storia”
Chapter 7: Stefania Lucamante: “‘The World Must Be the Writer’s Concern’: Elsa Morante’s Visions of History”
Chapter 8: Lorenzo Salvagni: “In Marguerite Caetani’s Literary Salon: a Study of Elsa Morante’s Contributions to Botteghe Oscure”

Part Two: Theater, Visual Arts and Cinema
Chapter 9: Gabrielle Orsi: “Lo Scialle Andaluso: The Intimate Theater of Elsa Morante”
Chapter 10: Gandolfo Cascio: “Elsa Morante’s Pictorial References and Ekphrasis in Alibi: from Vittore Carpaccio to Silvestro Lega”
Chapter 11: Claude Cazalé Bérard: “Senza i conforti della religione: An Interrupted Path between Cinema and Poetic Creation”
Chapter 12: Hanna Serkowska: “Arturo in the World of the ‘Pharisee Fathers’: The Cinematic Adaptation of Arturo’s Island”
Chapter 13: Thomas Harrison: “No Novel is an Island: Damiano Damiani’s L’isola di Arturo”
Chapter 14: Giovanna De Luca: “The Myth of Childhood: Luigi Comencini’s Adaptation of La Storia”
Chapter 15: Gaetana Marrone: “Staging a Writer’s Journey: Elsa Morante by Francesca Comencini”

Part Three: Queering Morante: Bodies that Matter from Diario 1938 to Aracoeli
Chapter 16: Katrin Wehling-Giorgi: “Tuo scandalo tuo splendore”: The Split Mother in Morante’s Works from Diario 1938 to Aracoeli
Chapter 17: Manuele Gragnolati: “Differently Queer: Sexuality and Aesthetics in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio and Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli”
Chapter 18: Maria Morelli: “Kaleidoscopic Sexualities: Defying Normative Resistance and Maternal Melancholia in Aracoeli”

Part Four: Morante’s Essays: the Self, Society and Art
Chapter 19: Flavia Cartoni: “Between Perception and Prophecy: Elsa Morante’s Reflections for the Present”
Chapter 20: Kenise Lyons: “‘Pro o Contro La rabbia’: Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Work of Art in the Atomic Age”
Chapter 21: Claudia Karagoz: “Timely Anachronisms: Elsa Morante, Adriana Cavarero and Roberto Esposito on Power, Violence, and Subjectivity”

Analytical Index
Bios contributors

Reviews

With this pioneering volume, Lucamante stimulates a postmodernist reading of the works of the canonical Italian writer Elsa Morante (1912–1985), especially her novels Menzogna e sortilegio (1948), La storia (1974), and Aracoeli (1982). The volume brings together international scholars and specialists with distinct backgrounds and diverse perspectives on Morante’s works and their adaptations (in cinema and in other visual arts). Lucamante organizes the 21 essays into four main parts: these focus on new approaches to the author’s works and related criticism, adaptations of Morante’s works, queer analysis, and Morante's critical essays. The book as a whole takes into consideration not only Morante’s published fictional texts and essays but also archived works now open to the public. Including analyses of the writer’s vision of history, the presence of Kafka in her writings, her conception of sexuality, her contribution to Rome’s intellectual life, and her artistic relationships with certain Italian intellectuals and philosophers, this volume is among the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies on Morante ever published. It will be of interest for Italian, gender, queer, and film adaptation studies as well as comparative literature. Summing Up:Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
— Choice Reviews

Elsa Morante's Politics of Writing

Rethinking Subjectivity, History, and the Power of Art

Elsa Morante's Politics of Writing

Rethinking Subjectivity, History, and the Power of Art

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