The Author in Criticism

Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom

Elio Attilio Baldi

The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom explores the cultural and historic patterns and differences in the critical readings of Italian author Italo Calvino’s works in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Italy. It considers the external factors that contribute to create recognizable patterns in the readings of Calvino’s texts in different contexts. This volume therefore covers, most notably, matters of genre (science fiction, postmodernism), cultural perceptions and conventions, the (re)current image of the author in different media, academic schools, -curricula and -canons, biographical information (such as gender and background), and translation and the language in which the author speaks (or fails to speak) to us. It traces the influence of these aspects in the academic discourse on Calvino. The Author in Criticism also analyzes Calvino’s various professional roles as writer, editor, essayist, journalist, private correspondent, and public, cosmopolitan intellectual, reappraising their often little acknowledged importance for academic criticism. An important underlying idea is that the preconceived image that every critic has of Calvino before even opening one of his books is often solidified and repeated even in the most refined and complex critical analyses. This volume purposefully foregrounds the textual and non-textual parts that are usually considered peripheral to the works of an author, such as book covers, blurbs, reviews, talks, interviews, etc. In this way, this book provides insight into the reception of Calvino’s works in different countries. Moreover, it forms a broader reflection of and on important constants in the workings of literary criticism, and on the way academic discourses have developed in various cultural contexts over the last decades.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 316 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-68393-191-1 • Hardback • March 2020 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-68393-193-5 • Paperback • March 2022 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-192-8 • eBook • March 2020 • $43.50 • (£35.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Italian Studies

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postmodernism

The Author in Criticism

Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom explores the cultural and historic patterns and differences in the critical readings of Italian author Italo Calvino’s works in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Italy. It considers the external factors that contribute to create recognizable patterns in the readings of Calvino’s texts in different contexts. This volume therefore covers, most notably, matters of genre (science fiction, postmodernism), cultural perceptions and conventions, the (re)current image of the author in different media, academic schools, -curricula and -canons, biographical information (such as gender and background), and translation and the language in which the author speaks (or fails to speak) to us. It traces the influence of these aspects in the academic discourse on Calvino. The Author in Criticism also analyzes Calvino’s various professional roles as writer, editor, essayist, journalist, private correspondent, and public, cosmopolitan intellectual, reappraising their often little acknowledged importance for academic criticism. An important underlying idea is that the preconceived image that every critic has of Calvino before even opening one of his books is often solidified and repeated even in the most refined and complex critical analyses. This volume purposefully foregrounds the textual and non-textual parts that are usually considered peripheral to the works of an author, such as book covers, blurbs, reviews, talks, interviews, etc. In this way, this book provides insight into the reception of Calvino’s works in different countries. Moreover, it forms a broader reflection of and on important constants in the workings of literary criticism, and on the way academic discourses have developed in various cultural contexts over the last decades.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 316 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-68393-191-1 • Hardback • March 2020 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-68393-193-5 • Paperback • March 2022 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-192-8 • eBook • March 2020 • $43.50 • (£35.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Italian Studies

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postmodernism

Author

Elio Attilio Baldi is lecturer at the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: The Dead Author and the Paratextual Calvino

Chapter Two: Calvino Within the Canon and Counter-Canon

Chapter Three: Calvino from High to Low: The Case of Science Fiction

Chapter Four: Calvino Crossing Boundaries: Trans[n/l]ational, Gendered and Posthuman Calvini

Conclusion: Moving Beyond Calvino With Calvino: Will the Real Calvino Please Stand Up?

Bibliography

Appendix: Further Reading

Index

About the Author

Reviews

In choosing to analyze Calvino’s authorial image within Italian, American, and British contexts, Baldi’s volume offers an extensive overview of the criticism on Calvino, both national and international, old and recent. . . . The book skillfully interrogates the general public’s perception of the author, along with that of Calvino criticism. . . Baldi’s contribution offers a compelling overview of the various forces and elements surrounding and informing the writer’s written production, from paratext to post-text, from national criticism to international criticism, from authorial intervention to more trendy criticism. It also sheds light on the writer’s “celebrity” side (5), that is to say, how Calvino’s popularity gained momentum due, in large part, to his ability to shape his own image.

— Annali D'Italianistica

Reading The Author in Criticism, the feeling is that of looking at Calvino’s oeuvre through a mirror placed before multiple other mirrors (the vast multilingual secondary bibliography that Baldi skilfully masters). Inevitably, the resulting image is a fragmented and multiple one that, unlike many previous critical accounts, seeks to escape from Calvino’s own authority: an authority that, especially in the context of this year’s centenary, is in extreme need of challenging and of being opened up to the hidden potential of non-canonical readings. There is no doubt that Baldi’s book accepts this challenge with insightful care and creative expertise.

— Italian Studies

[Against] the growing risk - which is common to all the "greats" of the twentieth century - of its gradual "monumentalisation," Baldi's volume, beyond the very valid and accurate work of focusing on the critical and filiative links and of the in-depth and brilliant analytical comparison of the hermeneutic positionings inside and outside the canon characterizing the work of the Ligurian author, serves to remind us of the irreducibility of the work of Calvino, one of the most analyzed and investigated writers, but who still remains today in many ways elusive, bearer of questions that have not yet been answered.

— Quaderni d’italianistica