Description
Book SynopsisWhile many scholars of world literature view national literary traditions as resolved and stable, Kafka’s Italian Progeny takes the fluid identity of the modern Italian tradition as an opportunity to reconsider its dimensions and influencers. Exploring a distinct but unexamined Kafkan tradition in modern Italian literature, it brings Italian literary works into larger debates and reorients the critical view of the Italian literary landscape. The book calls attention to the way Kafkan themes, narrative strategies, and formal experimentation appear in a range of Italian authors. Offering new perspectives on familiar figures, such as Italo Calvino, Italo Svevo, and Elena Ferrante, it also sheds light on some lesser-known authors, including Tommaso Landolfi, Paola Capriolo, and Lalla Romano.
Using diverse approaches to explore thematic, generic, historical, and cultural connections between Kafka’s works and those of Italian authors, the author argues for a ne
Trade Review
"Ziolkowski’s innovative research fills a gap in Italian comparative literature and explores the Kafkian tradition in Italy, one that has not been examined up until today." -- Andrea Sartori * Annali d’italianistica *
Table of Contents
Introduction Kafka, World Literature, and the Italian Literary Landscape The Place of Italian Literature in World Literature Debates Kafka’s Italian Reception: An Overview Morante and Buzzati: Two Cases of Kafka Reception Kafka’s Italian Progeny: An Overview 1. Amerika in Italy: Kafka’s Realism, Pavese, and Calvino Kafka’s Amerika in Italy The Italian View of Kafka’s Realism Calvino’s Realist Kafka Amerika and The Path to the Spiders’ Nests: Finding and Losing the Way, All Over Again The Americas of Kafka and Pavese 2. Dreams of Short Fiction after Kafka: Lalla Romano, Giorgio Manganelli, and Antonio Tabucchi Lyrical, Short Kafka Experimenting with Short, Short Works after Kafka The Transformations of Romano, Manganelli, and Tabucchi 3. Processi without End: The Mysteries of Dino Buzzati and Paola Capriolo Kafka, Detective Fiction, and Italy The Structures of Suspense: Questions, Identity, and Home Prisons of Analysis and the Pull of Imagination 4. Kafka’s Parental Bonds: The Family as Institution in Italian Literature The Familial Institution in Kafka and Modern Italian Literature Svevo’s A Life and Ferrante’s Troubling Love: Societal Stress and the Bonds of Family Leaving Parental Bonds in Bontempelli’s The Son of Two Mothers and Morante’s Arturo’s Island 5. The Human-Animal Boundary, Italian Style: Kafka’s Red Peter in Conversation with Svevo’s Argo, Morante’s Bella, and Landolfi’s Tombo Italian Literature, Kafka, and Animal Studies Communication across Species: The Monologues of Kafka’s Red Peter and Svevo’s Argo Interspecial Communication: Landolfi’s Châli and Tombo, Morante’s Belli and Immacolatella The Language of Animals and Dialects Animal Bodies and Christian Spirit in Morante, Landolfi, and Buzzati Epilogue Calvino’s Kafka and Kafka’s Italy
