Alberto Godioli

Walking Tours, Subjective Maps, and Spatial Justice: Urban and Non-Urban Spaces in Contemporary Italian Literature

Abstract This article focuses on the representation of urban, suburban, and rural spaces in contemporary Italian literature, by examining a corpus of fifteen titles published between 2004 and 2015. 2004 saw the start of the Laterza series Contromano, which marked a significant increase in the amount of texts providing literary tours or maps of the most various areas of Italy; for this reason, that year has been chosen as the starting point of the present investigation. Particular attention is paid to three aspects: 1) The use of walking as a way to achieve a more personal relation to the “topographical system” (De Certeau), as opposed to the abstractions underlying urban design; 2) The questioning of the boundaries between centre, periphery and countryside, as well as those surrounding areas inhabited by ethnic minorities; 3) The emphasis on abandoned or neglected spaces, usually leading to a broader reflection on the human costs of neoliberal modernity. In conclusion, despite their diversity, all of the selected texts aim to bridge the gap between our subjective experience of space on the one hand, and the abstract processes regulating our lives on the other; in order to do so, they attempt to unveil a hidden rhetoric of space, whereby a given place can become a metaphor or a synecdoche for broader phenomena.

Laughter from Realism to Modernism : Misfits and Humorists in Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda

As best exemplified by the works of Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda, Italian modernist fiction is particularly rich in bizarre and ludicrous characters, whose originality is often derided by a uniform society. On the other hand, laughter can also be used by the author (or by the misfits themselves) as a reaction to the levelling pressure of social life – Pirandello’s umorismo, Svevo’s irony, Palazzeschi’s controdolore, and Gadda’s satire are all good cases in point. Looked at from this perspective, early 20th-century Italian fiction can set the basis for an innovative reflection on broader comparative themes. What is the role of laughter and individual diversity in international Modernism? How is modernist eccentricity related to the representations of originality in the 18th and 19th centuries, from Sterne to Balzac and Dostoevsky? And what does it tell us about the fear of homogenisation as a crucial aspect of the modern social imaginary?

Natura non facit saltus: Gadda, Musil, and the Flux of Reality in European Modernism

Citation for published version (APA): Godioli, A. (2018). Natura non facit saltus: Gadda, Musil, and the Flux of Reality in European Modernism. In H. Veivo, J-P. Montier, F. Nicole, D. Ayers, B. Hjartarson, & S. Bru (Eds.), Beyond Given Knowledge: Investigation, Quest and Exploration in Modernism and the Avant-Gardes (pp. 189-203). (European AvantGarde and Modernism Studies; Vol. 5). De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110569230-014