Academic literature on the topic 'Guido Morselli'

Escrevendo na contramão das neovanguardas dos anos 1960, Guido Morselli (1912-1973) retoma a forma tradicional do romance em Divertimento 1889 para, simultaneamente, subverter o romance histórico e criar uma paródia melancólica dos destinos da Europa no final do século XIX.

O presente trabalho intenta apresentar um panorama da recepção crítica da obra de Clarice Lispector na Itália. Parte-se da primeira monografia publicada no país, na qual A Paixão segundo G. H. é comparada a Dissipatio H.G., de Guido Morselli. Além desta, analisam-se alguns artigos publicados em revistas especializadas, assim como o espaço dedicado por Luciana Stegagno Picchio a Clarice Lispector na sua Storia della letteratura brasiliana. Nessa, A hora da estrela é indicada como uma nova e incompleta fase literária aberta por Lispector e é sobre o romance que conta a tragédia de Macabéa que a crítica italiana, sobretudo, deteve-se. O que se pode observar é que, em oposição à grande e flórea quantidade de estudos que se realizam sobre a obra de Clarice Lispector, não somente no Brasil, mas também no exterior, a crítica italiana apresenta-se, ainda, bastante reduzida.

Tomando como punto de partida la poesía de Wallace Stevens, el artículo explora las relaciones entre literatura y filosofía a través de dos problemas interrelacionados: la extinción como horizonte de las especies vivientes de la Tierra y el estatuto ontológico del espectro. Por un lado, luego de analizar las ventajas de la noción de extinción por sobre la de finitud (según el legado de Heidegger), la investigación se propone, por un lado, explorar una forma minimalista de extinción relacionada con la supervivencia espectral en la obra filosófica de Max Stirner (1806‒1856). Por otro lado, apoyándose en la obra literaria de Guido Morselli (1916‒1973), el texto examina una noción maximalista de extinción, donde ya no hay siquiera lugar para el espectro. El método genealógico y hermenéutico busca, de este modo, responder la pregunta acerca de si es posible superar la metafísica de la presencia con la noción de Gran Afuera que se deduce de los análisis precedentes.

Abstract This paper discusses the role of Oromo proverbs in conflict resolution and/or management as a peace-making verbal communication principle in the cultural context. The lesson from proverbs, which contain traditional morsels of wisdom, consists of cultural value and rhetorical effectiveness helping to enforce reality in the context in which they are used. Data for this paper is generated from primary sources. In data gathering, we used interview and focus group discussion. The analysis shows that proverbs have persuasive power to advise, guide and influence conflicting parties to settle their case peacefully. The proverbs tell their truths about conflict situations and devise a resolution and management approach through metaphorical and symbolic representations. Proverbs are also an integral part of Oromo culture, handing down and imparting norms, values, rules and the worldview of the community to guide people to live in customary ways.

Dannunzite, a cultural plague, a generational disease that invaded every city and spread like wildfire throughout the Italian peninsula: thanks to critics, unknown or little known journalists and writers who started the literary debate, from the Calabria of Silvio Turco to the Tuscany of Guido Rubetti and Dino Mantovani, as they opposed reference cultural models, such as Ercole Luigi Morselli debuting the Orione, at the Argentina Theatre in Rome, hailed by critics and public as an example of anti-d’Annunzio theatre; and Orazio Amendola from Palermo, who patiently compiled the inventory of reasons to hate d’Annunzio, tracing, on the basis of what Max Nordau did, d’Annunzio’s ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’ arguments. Going through Dannunzianesimo and Dannunzite, the ‘antidannunziani’ showed the two faces of the same cultural phenomenon.

Introduction Food has always been an essential component of daily life. Today, thinking about food is a much more complicated pursuit than planning the next meal, with food studies scholars devoting their efforts to researching “anything pertaining to food and eating, from how food is grown to when and how it is eaten, to who eats it and with whom, and the nutritional quality” (Duran and MacDonald 234). This is in addition to the work undertaken by an increasingly wide variety of popular culture researchers who explore all aspects of food (Risson and Brien 3): including food advertising, food packaging, food on television, and food in popular fiction. In creating stories, from those works that quickly disappear from bookstore shelves to those that become entrenched in the literary canon, writers use food to communicate the everyday and to explore a vast range of ideas from cultural background to social standing, and also use food to provide perspectives “into the cultural and historical uniqueness of a given social group” (Piatti-Farnell 80). For example in Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, the central character challenges the class system when: “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity–‘Please, sir, I want some more’” (11). Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) makes a similar point, a little more dramatically, when she declares: “As God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again” (419). Food can also take us into the depths of another culture: places that many of us will only ever read about. Food is also used to provide insight into a character’s state of mind. In Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983) an item as simple as boiled bread tells a reader so much more about Rachel Samstat than her preferred bakery items: “So we got married and I got pregnant and I gave up my New York apartment and moved to Washington. Talk about mistakes [...] there I was, trying to hold up my end in a city where you can’t even buy a decent bagel” (34). There are three ways in which writers can deal with food within their work. Firstly, food can be totally ignored. This approach is sometimes taken despite food being such a standard feature of storytelling that its absence, be it a lonely meal at home, elegant canapés at an impressively catered cocktail party, or a cheap sandwich collected from a local café, is an obvious omission. Food can also add realism to a story, with many authors putting as much effort into conjuring the smell, taste, and texture of food as they do into providing a backstory and a purpose for their characters. In recent years, a third way has emerged with some writers placing such importance upon food in fiction that the line that divides the cookbook and the novel has become distorted. This article looks at cookbooks and cookery in popular fiction with a particular focus on crime novels. Recipes: Ingredients and Preparation Food in fiction has been employed, with great success, to help characters cope with grief; giving them the reassurance that only comes through the familiarity of the kitchen and the concentration required to fulfil routine tasks: to chop and dice, to mix, to sift and roll, to bake, broil, grill, steam, and fry. Such grief can come from the breakdown of a relationship as seen in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983). An autobiography under the guise of fiction, this novel is the first-person story of a cookbook author, a description that irritates the narrator as she feels her works “aren’t merely cookbooks” (95). She is, however, grateful she was not described as “a distraught, rejected, pregnant cookbook author whose husband was in love with a giantess” (95). As the collapse of the marriage is described, her favourite recipes are shared: Bacon Hash; Four Minute Eggs; Toasted Almonds; Lima Beans with Pears; Linguine Alla Cecca; Pot Roast; three types of Potatoes; Sorrel Soup; desserts including Bread Pudding, Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie and Peach Pie; and a Vinaigrette, all in an effort to reassert her personal skills and thus personal value. Grief can also result from loss of hope and the realisation that a life long dreamed of will never be realised. Like Water for Chocolate (1989), by Laura Esquivel, is the magical realist tale of Tita De La Garza who, as the youngest daughter, is forbidden to marry as she must take care of her mother, a woman who: “Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying or dominating […] was a pro” (87). Tita’s life lurches from one painful, unjust episode to the next; the only emotional stability she has comes from the kitchen, and from her cooking of a series of dishes: Christmas Rolls; Chabela Wedding Cake; Quail in Rose Petal Sauce; Turkey Mole; Northern-style Chorizo; Oxtail Soup; Champandongo; Chocolate and Three Kings’s Day Bread; Cream Fritters; and Beans with Chilli Tezcucana-style. This is a series of culinary-based activities that attempts to superimpose normalcy on a life that is far from the everyday. Grief is most commonly associated with death. Undertaking the selection, preparation and presentation of meals in novels dealing with bereavement is both a functional and symbolic act: life must go on for those left behind but it must go on in a very different way. Thus, novels that use food to deal with loss are particularly important because they can “make non-cooks believe they can cook, and for frequent cooks, affirm what they already know: that cooking heals” (Baltazar online). In Angelina’s Bachelors (2011) by Brian O’Reilly, Angelina D’Angelo believes “cooking was not just about food. It was about character” (2). By the end of the first chapter the young woman’s husband is dead and she is in the kitchen looking for solace, and survival, in cookery. In The Kitchen Daughter (2011) by Jael McHenry, Ginny Selvaggio is struggling to cope with the death of her parents and the friends and relations who crowd her home after the funeral. Like Angelina, Ginny retreats to the kitchen. There are, of course, exceptions. In Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), cooking celebrates, comforts, and seduces (Calta). This story of three sisters from South Carolina is told through diary entries, narrative, letters, poetry, songs, and spells. Recipes are also found throughout the text: Turkey; Marmalade; Rice; Spinach; Crabmeat; Fish; Sweetbread; Duck; Lamb; and, Asparagus. Anthony Capella’s The Food of Love (2004), a modern retelling of the classic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, is about the beautiful Laura, a waiter masquerading as a top chef Tommaso, and the talented Bruno who, “thick-set, heavy, and slightly awkward” (21), covers for Tommaso’s incompetency in the kitchen as he, too, falls for Laura. The novel contains recipes and contains considerable information about food: Take fusilli […] People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly (17). Recipes: Dishing Up Death Crime fiction is a genre with a long history of focusing on food; from the theft of food in the novels of the nineteenth century to the utilisation of many different types of food such as chocolate, marmalade, and sweet omelettes to administer poison (Berkeley, Christie, Sayers), the latter vehicle for arsenic receiving much attention in Harriet Vane’s trial in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison (1930). The Judge, in summing up the case, states to the members of the jury: “Four eggs were brought to the table in their shells, and Mr Urquhart broke them one by one into a bowl, adding sugar from a sifter [...he then] cooked the omelette in a chafing dish, filled it with hot jam” (14). Prior to what Timothy Taylor has described as the “pre-foodie era” the crime fiction genre was “littered with corpses whose last breaths smelled oddly sweet, or bitter, or of almonds” (online). Of course not all murders are committed in such a subtle fashion. In Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter (1953), Mary Maloney murders her policeman husband, clubbing him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. The meat is roasting nicely when her husband’s colleagues arrive to investigate his death, the lamb is offered and consumed: the murder weapon now beyond the recovery of investigators. Recent years have also seen more and more crime fiction writers present a central protagonist working within the food industry, drawing connections between the skills required for food preparation and those needed to catch a murderer. Working with cooks or crooks, or both, requires planning and people skills in addition to creative thinking, dedication, reliability, stamina, and a willingness to take risks. Kent Carroll insists that “food and mysteries just go together” (Carroll in Calta), with crime fiction website Stop, You’re Killing Me! listing, at the time of writing, over 85 culinary-based crime fiction series, there is certainly sufficient evidence to support his claim. Of the numerous works available that focus on food there are many series that go beyond featuring food and beverages, to present recipes as well as the solving of crimes. These include: the Candy Holliday Murder Mysteries by B. B. Haywood; the Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle; the Hannah Swensen Mysteries by Joanne Fluke; the Hemlock Falls Mysteries by Claudia Bishop; the Memphis BBQ Mysteries by Riley Adams; the Piece of Cake Mysteries by Jacklyn Brady; the Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs; and, the White House Chef Mysteries by Julie Hyzy. The vast majority of offerings within this female dominated sub-genre that has been labelled “Crime and Dine” (Collins online) are American, both in origin and setting. A significant contribution to this increasingly popular formula is, however, from an Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Food features within her famed Phryne Fisher Series with recipes included in A Question of Death (2007). Recipes also form part of Greenwood’s food-themed collection of short crime stories Recipes for Crime (1995), written with Jenny Pausacker. These nine stories, each one imitating the style of one of crime fiction’s greatest contributors (from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler), allow readers to simultaneously access mysteries and recipes. 2004 saw the first publication of Earthly Delights and the introduction of her character, Corinna Chapman. This series follows the adventures of a woman who gave up a career as an accountant to open her own bakery in Melbourne. Corinna also investigates the occasional murder. Recipes can be found at the end of each of these books with the Corinna Chapman Recipe Book (nd), filled with instructions for baking bread, muffins and tea cakes in addition to recipes for main courses such as risotto, goulash, and “Chicken with Pineapple 1971 Style”, available from the publisher’s website. Recipes: Integration and Segregation In Heartburn (1983), Rachel acknowledges that presenting a work of fiction and a collection of recipes within a single volume can present challenges, observing: “I see that I haven’t managed to work in any recipes for a while. It’s hard to work in recipes when you’re moving the plot forward” (99). How Rachel tells her story is, however, a reflection of how she undertakes her work, with her own cookbooks being, she admits, more narration than instruction: “The cookbooks I write do well. They’re very personal and chatty–they’re cookbooks in an almost incidental way. I write chapters about friends or relatives or trips or experiences, and work in the recipes peripherally” (17). Some authors integrate detailed recipes into their narratives through description and dialogue. An excellent example of this approach can be found in the Coffeehouse Mystery Series by Cleo Coyle, in the novel On What Grounds (2003). When the central protagonist is being questioned by police, Clare Cosi’s answers are interrupted by a flashback scene and instructions on how to make Greek coffee: Three ounces of water and one very heaped teaspoon of dark roast coffee per serving. (I used half Italian roast, and half Maracaibo––a lovely Venezuelan coffee, named after the country’s major port; rich in flavour, with delicate wine overtones.) / Water and finely ground beans both go into the ibrik together. The water is then brought to a boil over medium heat (37). This provides insight into Clare’s character; that, when under pressure, she focuses her mind on what she firmly believes to be true – not the information that she is doubtful of or a situation that she is struggling to understand. Yet breaking up the action within a novel in this way–particularly within crime fiction, a genre that is predominantly dependant upon generating tension and building the pacing of the plotting to the climax–is an unusual but ultimately successful style of writing. Inquiry and instruction are comfortable bedfellows; as the central protagonists within these works discover whodunit, the readers discover who committed murder as well as a little bit more about one of the world’s most popular beverages, thus highlighting how cookbooks and novels both serve to entertain and to educate. Many authors will save their recipes, serving them up at the end of a story. This can be seen in Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery novels, the cover of each volume in the series boasts that it “includes Recipes for a Complete Presidential Menu!” These menus, with detailed ingredients lists, instructions for cooking and options for serving, are segregated from the stories and appear at the end of each work. Yet other writers will deploy a hybrid approach such as the one seen in Like Water for Chocolate (1989), where the ingredients are listed at the commencement of each chapter and the preparation for the recipes form part of the narrative. This method of integration is also deployed in The Kitchen Daughter (2011), which sees most of the chapters introduced with a recipe card, those chapters then going on to deal with action in the kitchen. Using recipes as chapter breaks is a structure that has, very recently, been adopted by Australian celebrity chef, food writer, and, now fiction author, Ed Halmagyi, in his new work, which is both cookbook and novel, The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally (2012). As people exchange recipes in reality, so too do fictional characters. The Recipe Club (2009), by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel, is the story of two friends, Lilly Stone and Valerie Rudman, which is structured as an epistolary novel. As they exchange feelings, ideas and news in their correspondence, they also exchange recipes: over eighty of them throughout the novel in e-mails and letters. In The Food of Love (2004), written messages between two of the main characters are also used to share recipes. In addition, readers are able to post their own recipes, inspired by this book and other works by Anthony Capella, on the author’s website. From Page to Plate Some readers are contributing to the burgeoning food tourism market by seeking out the meals from the pages of their favourite novels in bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world, expanding the idea of “map as menu” (Spang 79). In Shannon McKenna Schmidt’s and Joni Rendon’s guide to literary tourism, Novel Destinations (2009), there is an entire section, “Eat Your Words: Literary Places to Sip and Sup”, dedicated to beverages and food. The listings include details for John’s Grill, in San Francisco, which still has on the menu Sam Spade’s Lamb Chops, served with baked potato and sliced tomatoes: a meal enjoyed by author Dashiell Hammett and subsequently consumed by his well-known protagonist in The Maltese Falcon (193), and the Café de la Paix, in Paris, frequented by Ian Fleming’s James Bond because “the food was good enough and it amused him to watch the people” (197). Those wanting to follow in the footsteps of writers can go to Harry’s Bar, in Venice, where the likes of Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, and Truman Capote have all enjoyed a drink (195) or The Eagle and Child, in Oxford, which hosted the regular meetings of the Inklings––a group which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien––in the wood-panelled Rabbit Room (203). A number of eateries have developed their own literary themes such as the Peacocks Tearooms, in Cambridgeshire, which blends their own teas. Readers who are also tea drinkers can indulge in the Sherlock Holmes (Earl Grey with Lapsang Souchong) and the Doctor Watson (Keemun and Darjeeling with Lapsang Souchong). Alternatively, readers may prefer to side with the criminal mind and indulge in the Moriarty (Black Chai with Star Anise, Pepper, Cinnamon, and Fennel) (Peacocks). The Moat Bar and Café, in Melbourne, situated in the basement of the State Library of Victoria, caters “to the whimsy and fantasy of the fiction housed above” and even runs a book exchange program (The Moat). For those readers who are unable, or unwilling, to travel the globe in search of such savoury and sweet treats there is a wide variety of locally-based literary lunches and other meals, that bring together popular authors and wonderful food, routinely organised by book sellers, literature societies, and publishing houses. There are also many cookbooks now easily obtainable that make it possible to re-create fictional food at home. One of the many examples available is The Book Lover’s Cookbook (2003) by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen, a work containing over three hundred pages of: Breakfasts; Main & Side Dishes; Soups; Salads; Appetizers, Breads & Other Finger Foods; Desserts; and Cookies & Other Sweets based on the pages of children’s books, literary classics, popular fiction, plays, poetry, and proverbs. If crime fiction is your preferred genre then you can turn to Jean Evans’s The Crime Lover’s Cookbook (2007), which features short stories in between the pages of recipes. There is also Estérelle Payany’s Recipe for Murder (2010) a beautifully illustrated volume that presents detailed instructions for Pigs in a Blanket based on the Big Bad Wolf’s appearance in The Three Little Pigs (44–7), and Roast Beef with Truffled Mashed Potatoes, which acknowledges Patrick Bateman’s fondness for fine dining in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (124–7). Conclusion Cookbooks and many popular fiction novels are reflections of each other in terms of creativity, function, and structure. In some instances the two forms are so closely entwined that a single volume will concurrently share a narrative while providing information about, and instruction, on cookery. Indeed, cooking in books is becoming so popular that the line that traditionally separated cookbooks from other types of books, such as romance or crime novels, is becoming increasingly distorted. The separation between food and fiction is further blurred by food tourism and how people strive to experience some of the foods found within fictional works at bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world or, create such experiences in their own homes using fiction-themed recipe books. Food has always been acknowledged as essential for life; books have long been acknowledged as food for thought and food for the soul. Thus food in both the real world and in the imagined world serves to nourish and sustain us in these ways. References Adams, Riley. Delicious and Suspicious. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Finger Lickin’ Dead. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Hickory Smoked Homicide. New York: Berkley, 2011. Baltazar, Lori. “A Novel About Food, Recipes Included [Book review].” Dessert Comes First. 28 Feb. 2012. 20 Aug. 2012 ‹http://dessertcomesfirst.com/archives/8644›. Berkeley, Anthony. The Poisoned Chocolates Case. London: Collins, 1929. Bishop, Claudia. Toast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Dread on Arrival. New York: Berkley, 2012. Brady, Jacklyn. A Sheetcake Named Desire. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Cake on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: Berkley, 2012. Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Capella, Anthony. The Food of Love. London: Time Warner, 2004/2005. Carroll, Kent in Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Childs, Laura. Death by Darjeeling. New York: Berkley, 2001. –– Shades of Earl Grey. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Blood Orange Brewing. New York: Berkley, 2006/2007. –– The Teaberry Strangler. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Collins, Glenn. “Your Favourite Fictional Crime Moments Involving Food.” The New York Times Diner’s Journal: Notes on Eating, Drinking and Cooking. 16 Jul. 2012. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/your-favorite-fictional-crime-moments-involving-food›. Coyle, Cleo. On What Grounds. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Murder Most Frothy. New York: Berkley, 2006. –– Holiday Grind. New York: Berkley, 2009/2010. –– Roast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Christie, Agatha. A Pocket Full of Rye. London: Collins, 1953. Dahl, Roald. Lamb to the Slaughter: A Roald Dahl Short Story. New York: Penguin, 1953/2012. eBook. Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist, or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. In Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors, Vol. CCXXIX. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1838/1839. Duran, Nancy, and Karen MacDonald. “Information Sources for Food Studies Research.” Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 2.9 (2006): 233–43. Ephron, Nora. Heartburn. New York: Vintage, 1983/1996. Esquivel, Laura. Trans. Christensen, Carol, and Thomas Christensen. Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Instalments with Recipes, romances and home remedies. London: Black Swan, 1989/1993. Evans, Jeanne M. The Crime Lovers’s Cookbook. City: Happy Trails, 2007. Fluke, Joanne. Fudge Cupcake Murder. New York: Kensington, 2004. –– Key Lime Pie Murder. New York: Kensington, 2007. –– Cream Puff Murder. New York: Kensington, 2009. –– Apple Turnover Murder. New York: Kensington, 2010. Greenwood, Kerry, and Jenny Pausacker. Recipes for Crime. Carlton: McPhee Gribble, 1995. Greenwood, Kerry. The Corinna Chapman Recipe Book: Mouth-Watering Morsels to Make Your Man Melt, Recipes from Corinna Chapman, Baker and Reluctant Investigator. nd. 25 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/documents/minisites/Corinna_recipebook.pdf›. –– A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Treasury. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Halmagyi, Ed. The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2012. Haywood, B. B. Town in a Blueberry Jam. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Town in a Lobster Stew. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Town in a Wild Moose Chase. New York: Berkley, 2012. Hyzy, Julie. State of the Onion. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Hail to the Chef. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Eggsecutive Orders. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Buffalo West Wing. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Affairs of Steak. New York: Berkley, 2012. Israel, Andrea, and Nancy Garfinkel, with Melissa Clark. The Recipe Club: A Novel About Food And Friendship. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. McHenry, Jael. The Kitchen Daughter: A Novel. New York: Gallery, 2011. Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. London: Pan, 1936/1974 O’Reilly, Brian, with Virginia O’Reilly. Angelina’s Bachelors: A Novel, with Food. New York: Gallery, 2011. Payany, Estérelle. Recipe for Murder: Frightfully Good Food Inspired by Fiction. Paris: Flammarion, 2010. Peacocks Tearooms. Peacocks Tearooms: Our Unique Selection of Teas. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.peacockstearoom.co.uk/teas/page1.asp›. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. “A Taste of Conflict: Food, History and Popular Culture In Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 79–91. Risson, Toni, and Donna Lee Brien. “Editors’ Letter: That Takes the Cake: A Slice Of Australasian Food Studies Scholarship.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 3–7. Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930/2003. Schmidt, Shannon McKenna, and Joni Rendon. Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009. Shange, Ntozake. Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo: A Novel. New York: St Martin’s, 1982. Spang, Rebecca L. “All the World’s A Restaurant: On The Global Gastronomics Of Tourism and Travel.” In Raymond Grew (Ed). Food in Global History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. 79–91. Taylor, Timothy. “Food/Crime Fiction.” Timothy Taylor. 2010. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.timothytaylor.ca/10/08/20/foodcrime-fiction›. The Moat Bar and Café. The Moat Bar and Café: Welcome. nd. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://themoat.com.au/Welcome.html›. Wenger, Shaunda Kennedy, and Janet Kay Jensen. The Book Lover’s Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Celebrated Works of Literature, and the Passages that Feature Them. New York: Ballantine, 2003/2005.

Au milieu des annees soixante-dix, guide morselli (1912-1973) est devenu un cas litteraire en italie quand, apres son suicide, a la maison d'edition adelphi publia posthumes sept de ses romans et un essai. Se son vivant, cet honnete homme retire a varese (lombardie) avait systematiquement essuye des refus de publication. Et les deux essais qu'il publia a compte d'auteur, en 1943 et 1947 ne susciterent presque aucun echo. Notre hypothese est que les facteurs ideologiques ont joue un role important dans l'echec de cet intellectuel. D'abord pendant ses annees de formation qui coinciderent avec l'affirmation du regime fasciste, et ensuite dans l'italie de l'apres-fascisme ou il devint un marginal, au plan professionnel comme au plan personnel. Entre fascisme et apres-fascisme, l'experience de la guerre que guido morselli vit en calabre apparait comme un temps de suspension et de desenchantement qui correspond aussi a ses premieres tentatives d'ecriture romanesque. La reaction de rejet qui a ete celle de la culture italienne de l'apres-fascisme a son egard pourrait s'expliquer par son positionnement singulier-ni totale defiance ni adhesion pleine et entiere - par rapport d'une part a l'heritage ideologique du fascisme que l'italie d'apres 1973 voudrait occulter et, d'autre part, a l'utopie communiste fortement enracinee dans cette meme italie. Son travail d'intellectuel presque clandestin est ainsi le moyen d'une quete existentielle ou, marquee au sceau de l'autobiographisme, l'ecriture sert de mediation entre soi et les autres, entre l'individu et la collectivite, entre les idees et le monde concret. On le connait surtout comme un romancier. Notre etude, en particulier de ses inedits, souligne combien pour morselli le roman est en fait l'essai continue par d'autres moyens
In the middle of the 70's guido morselli emerged unexpectelly as a literary figure in italy, when after his suicide the publishing house adelphi published seven of his novels and essays posthumously. During his lifetime, this modest man who had chosen to live as a recluse had come up against systematic refusal to have his work published. Moreover, the two essays he published at his own expense between 1943 and 1947 stirred hardly and interest. Our hypothesis is that ideological factors played a major played a major role in his failure to be recognized. Those factors influenced his early education which coincided with the confirmation of the fascit regime and later with a postfascist italy which put him on to the fringe both professionally and personnaly. Between fascism and post-fascism the war period experienced by guido morselli in calabria appears to be a moment of immobility characterized by a certain desenchantement which correspond to his first attemps at novel-writing. The rejection to which he wa subjected by post fascist italy can be explained by his unusual position - neither completly for nor complety against - with regard to, on the one hand, an ideological heritage of fascism which italy after 1943 try to eradicate, and on the other hand a communist utopia deeply rooted in the same italy. His quasi clandestine intellectual activity of writing serves as a means to an existential quest characterized by autobiographical references. His writing can be seen as a mediation between self and others, between the individual and society, between concepts and the material world. He is known above all as a novelist. Our study particularly of his unpublished works emphasizes to what extend the novel was for morselli, the continuation of an essay trhough other means

2013/2014
Lo scopo della ricerca è tracciare un panorama approfondito delle narrazioni ucroniche pure prodotte in ambito italiano. Si intende per ucronia pura un testo letterario – lungo o breve – incentrato su un’ipotesi retrospettiva che proponga uno svolgimento alternativo a un fatto storico consolidato: l’aggettivo pura vuole specificare le narrazione di storia alternativa la cui divergenza non sia dovuta a dispositivi finzionali altri, quali il viaggio nel tempo e gli universi paralleli. Di conseguenza, l’elaborato si focalizzerà solo sui testi allostorici ambientati in un universo ucronico indipendente e autosufficiente: tenendo ben presente questo limite, saranno delineati alcuni confronti sia con i testi ucronici “spuri”, sia con la produzione storiografica controfattuale. Se lo stato degli studi sull’ucronia è piuttosto frammentario ed è stato affrontato dal dibattito accademico solo negli ultimi trent’anni1, questo atteggiamento narrativo è invece piuttosto antico e ha subito diverse trasformazioni nel corso della sua storia: la speculazione controfattuale, infatti, dopo essere nata agli albori della storiografia, all’interno delle opere di Erodoto e Livio, è restata una possibilità assolutamente minoritaria all’interno della letteratura occidentale, se non altro fino allo sviluppo delle narrazioni utopiche in epoca moderna. Dopo una fase che è stata definita da molti come “protoucronica” e che ha attraversato tutto il XIX secolo, con la nascita della moderna fantascienza l’ucronia ne diventa un sottogenere, perlomeno fino alla fine della Guerra Fredda, dopo cui ha guadagnato nuovamente una certa autonomia. La prima parte della ricerca è focalizzata nell’indagine delle opere protoucroniche prodotte in ambito italiano e chiude con l’analisi del primo romanzo propriamente ucronico scritto in lingua italiana, ossia Benito I imperatore di Marco Ramperti. Partendo dai testi critici degli anni Ottanta2, ho inizialmente analizzato nel suo contesto la prima ipotesi controfattuale esplicita della storia, ovvero quella inserita da Lorenzo Pignotti nella sua Storia della Toscana sino al principato. Mi sono poi concentrato su un gruppo di opere a cavallo fra XIX e XX secolo le cui caratteristiche potevano risultare di un certo interesse nel tentativo di tracciare alcuni precursori della narrativa fantastorica italiana e il rapporto che spesso intrattiene con un immaginario reazionario. Inoltre, ho inserito un paragrafo che esamina la ricezione dell’opera di Renouvier in Italia e la squalifica di Croce nei confronti delle ipotesi controfattuali nella storiografia: il punto di contatto è il filosofo di Adriano Tilgher, allievo di Croce che aderirà al fascismo e con cui polemizzerà proprio sull’antistoricismo di Renouvier. Tilgher, infatti, sarà il primo autore italiano a utilizzare esplicitamente il calco ucronia, traslato dal francese uchronie, e l’interesse di Evola nei confronti della sua filosofia rappresenterà un importante punto di contatto fra il problema delle ipotesi controfattuali nella storiografia e nella narrativa e l’interesse proficuo fra la destra italiana radicale e spiritualista e l’ucronia Questa sezione dell’elaborato termina perciò con l’analisi del primo romanzo ucronico italiano, ovvero Benito I Imperatore di Marco Ramperti, la cui stesura e pubblicazione si colloca all’interno del contesto storico del primo attivismo neofascista italiano e dello scontro fra i vertici del MSI e i giovani reduci di Salò vicini al Ragguppamento Giovanili (con i quali si schiera Ramperti, nonostante la differenza di età). L’edizione del romanzo sarà infatti di poco precedente al processo contro i FAR (e Julius Evola) che determinerà un’importante battuta di arresto in questo primo movimentismo neofascista. Nella seconda parte dell’elaborato si propone l’esame del periodo che va dalla pubblicazione di Benito I all’edizione dell’antologia di racconti ucronici Fantafascismo! curata da Gianfranco de Turris. La prima sezione analizza tre singolari romanzi ucronici totalmente slegati sia dagli ambiti della destra radicale che da quelli della nicchia fantascientifica, ma anche dotati di una notevole indipendenza dai modelli stranieri. Si tratta di Asse pigliatutto di Lucio Ceva, Aprire il fuoco di Luciano Bianciardi e la principale opera ucronica italiana, ovvero Contro-passato prossimo di Guido Morselli. Dopo un paragrafo introduttivo in cui si illustrano i motivi per cui si potrebbero indicarli come testi canonici di una linea indipendente e prettamente italiana di narrativa ucronica, la trattazione prosegue con l’analisi di Aprire il fuoco, romanzo che non presenta le caratteristiche dell’ucronia pura, ma che risulta una tappa fondamentale nella cronologia della fantastoria italiana, soprattutto per la sua grande originalità. Successivamente, si cerca di mettere in comparazione Contro-passato prossimo con l’ucronia più rappresentativa in ambito anglosassone, ovvero The Man in the High Castle di Phili K. Dick, in modo da far emergere, attraverso il raffronto fra queste due opere esemplari, alcune caratteristiche comuni alle ucronie mature. La seconda sezione di questa parte, invece, ricostruisce sinteticamente la storia del dibattito su fantascienza e fascismo all’interno delle riveste di settore italiane e il ruolo di questa querelle nella compilazione dell’antologia di racconti ucronici ad ambientazione fascista, uscita con la curatela di Gianfranco de Turris per i tipi di Settimo Sigillo nel 1999. In questa raccolta, infatti si trova il racconto da cui scaturirà la saga ucronica italiana di maggior successo, ovvero quella di Occidente di Mario Farneti, la cui pubblicazione fomenterà nuovamente la polemica sulla letteratura fantastica neofascista, anche grazie a un articolo di Valerio Evangelisti su Monde Diplomatique. Dopo l’analisi della saga di Occidente, la seconda parte chiude con una rassegna delle altre pubblicazioni ucroniche italiane degli anni Novanta. La terza parte esamina la situazione della narrativa ucronica italiana negli anni Duemila e offre una breve rassegna delle tendenze attuali. In essa sono affrontate le varie forme di ucronia fantafascista slegate dall’ambiente della destra radicale (o in aperta polemica con esso), come i due romanzi di Giampietro Stocco ambientati in un’Italia in cui il regime è sopravvissuto fino agli anni Sessanta e l’Epopea fantastorica italiana di Enrico Brizzi, ovvero la saga che rappresenta forse l’esito più interessante, da un punto di vista letterario, della narrativa ucronica italiana dopo Contro-passato prossimo. Nella saga allostorica di Brizzi, infatti, il fascismo vittorioso viene rappresentato non tanto nella sua brutalità – come nei romanzi di Stocco – quanto in relazione con i suoi aspetti grotteschi. Inoltre, per certi versi, il primo romanzo del ciclo, L’inattesa piega degli eventi, oltre a rappresentare un raro caso di narrativa sportiva italiana, cerca di innestarsi nell’esile tracciato delle opere storiche e letterarie italiane che cercano di rileggere in un’ottica post-coloniale il passato imperialista del nostro paese. Oltre a questi due cicli, sono analizzate le altre antologie ucroniche curate da de Turris e da altri e pubblicate sulla scia del successo di Occidente. La conclusione di questa parte e dell’intera ricerca si concentra sugli ultimi anni, segnati dall’esaurimento del filone fantafascista (allineato o meno agli ambienti della destra sociale) e dalla comparsa dei primi esempi di steampunk italiano, una sorta di sottogenere fantastorico del fantasy, privo delle ambizioni della letteratura ucronica, di cui sembra semmai una versione depotenziata. In chiusura della ricerca è stata inserita un’appendice in cui sono schematizzate tutte le narrazioni ucroniche pure considerate, con i loro punti di divergenza e alcune proposte personali di catalogazione tassonomica dei testi.
XXVII Ciclo
1981

Il pensiero utopico, attitudine e completamento della mente umana soprattutto a partire dall’età moderna, ha visto una significativa trasformazione nel corso del XX secolo. Questa nuova fase è caratterizzata dall’opposizione tra un’utopia problematica, che sembrava dapprima aver raggiunto una soddisfacente espressione socio-politica, e una progressiva delusione che porta all’affermazione della distopia come nuovo genere letterario. Sebbene la distopia possa essere considerata a lungo come la narrazione della modernità, gli ultimi decenni hanno mostrato come essa possa essere superata. Di fatto la coscienza collettiva, priva di qualsiasi residuo delle utopie passate, depotenzia il valore rivoluzionario della distopia, tanto più quando le ansie millenarie che la fondavano rischiano di materializzarsi: la distruzione della vita, del pianeta e della civiltà ha già superato il peggio possibile prefigurato dalla distopia. A partire da tale quadro, questa tesi di dottorato analizza come la letteratura italiana ha affrontato il passaggio dalla distopia al genere apocalittico attraverso quattro autori novecenteschi: Corrado Alvaro e la sua distopia dispotica; il mondo solipsistico di Guido Morselli; la critica alla fabbrica e al capitalismo di Paolo Volponi; la terra desolata descritta dall’ultimo Carlo Cassola. È importante notare che la cultura italiana del Novecento non era molto incline ad accettare ed accogliere la forma letteraria distopica e i suoi sottogeneri come, ad esempio, l’ucronia. Proprio questa resistenza rende interessante tracciare un’ipotetica evoluzione, non solo legata alla storia italiana ma anche alle trasformazioni del pensiero occidentale. La ricerca condotta considera le relazioni tra utopia e distopia nei quattro autori esaminati come radicate nella loro biografia, caratterizzate da diverse strategie di straniamento e centrata su due figure ricorrenti, lo straniero e il reduce. L’esito è un peculiare approccio alla persistenza e al fallimento dell’utopia da un lato, e all’emergere della distopia dall’altro, fino all’apocalisse come rappresentazione estrema e allo stesso tempo svuotamento del genere distopico.
Utopian thinking as complement of human mind, especially in Modern Age, reached a major landmark in the 20th century. This period was characterised by the opposition between a problematic Utopia, which seemed at first to have found a perfect socio-political expression, and a progressive discontent whose result was the affirmation of Dystopia as a new literary genre. Although Dystopia can be considered for a long time as the narration of modernity, the last decades have shown how it can be outdated. Actually, collective consciousness, void of any fragment of past utopias, deprives Dystopia of its revolutionary value. Futhermore, nowadays the millenary anxieties at the basis of Dystopia risk to materialize: the actual destruction of human life, planet and civilization has already overcome the ‘worst possible’ of Dystopia. Departing from such overview, this Ph.D thesis analyses how Italian literature faced the turn from Dystopia to the advent of the Apocalyptic genre through four writers in the 20th century: Corrado Alvaro and his ‘despotic dystopia’; Guido Morselli’s solipsistic world; Paolo Volponi’s critique of factory and capitalism; and the “waste land” described by the last Carlo Cassola. Notably, Italian culture at the time was not very prone to accept and implement the dystopian literary form and its various sub-genres (such as Uchronia). Therefore, it is interesting to trace a hypothetical evolution that not only is deeply rooted in national history but also reflects current developments throughout Western thinking. The research carried out takes in consideration the relationships between utopia and dystopia in the four writers as rooted in the authors’s biography, characterized by different modalities of estrangement and centred on the recurrent figures of the stranger and the homecomer. The result is a peculiar approach to the persistence and failure of utopia on the one hand and the emergence of dystopia on the other, to the point of Apocalypse as extreme representation of the genre and its concurrent weakening.

La tesi si propone di individuare e di definire una sorta di (sotto)genere letterario fin qui mai trattato, quello del romanzo-testamento. Con questa definizione mi riferisco a tutte le opere scritte all’interno della “dimensione della morte”, ovvero la fase della vita in cui il pensiero della morte diviene dominante. Questo accade solitamente per tre possibili motivi: per l’età avanzata, per una grave malattia o per una precisa volontà suicida; a queste tre motivazioni corrispondono altrettanti capitoli, ognuno dei quali approfondisce quattro diversi testi (romanzi, racconti o fumetti che siano). La situazione nelle quali gli autori realizzano le rispettive opere è estremamente differente: chi affronta la morte in tarda età può permettersi di scrivere con una certa serenità, nella consapevolezza di avere completato naturalmente il proprio percorso; chi muore anzitempo, per malattia, rimpiange gli anni che non potrà vivere e realizza opere animate da una notevole tensione narrativa; chi sceglie di darsi volontariamente la morte si rivolge al mondo con atteggiamento di sfida, per quanto il suo sguardo si dimostri freddo e distaccato. Segue quindi un’appendice nella quale si analizzano altri tre romanzi: originariamente contenuti nei tre capitoli iniziali, essi sono stati successivamente stralciati in quanto sfuggivano a una precisa categorizzazione e male si amalgamavano agli altri; peraltro, tali romanzi erano troppo pertinenti per ignorarli, per cui sono stati trattati in un’apposita sezione. Capitolo 1. Il vecchio scrittore e la morte. I romanzi analizzati sono Deux anglaises et le continent (Henri-Pierre Roché, 1956), Mercy of a Rude Stream (Henry Roth, 1994-1998), The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (Charles Bukowski, 1998) e Ravelstein (Saul Bellow, 2000). Quattro opere realizzate da autori piuttosto avanti con l’età (si va dai 72 anni di Bukowski agli 89 di Roth) che si rivelano interamente o parzialmente autobiografiche: Roché rivive una fase della propria giovinezza, romanzandola; Roth ripercorre i tredici anni vissuti ad Harlem tra il 1914 e il 1927 dedicandovi ben quattro volumi (per un totale di circa 1500 pagine); Bukowski tiene un vero e proprio diario in cui racconta le proprie esperienze quotidiane; Bellow narra la propria amicizia con Abe Ravelstein, intellettuale ebreo morto qualche anno prima. L’unico dei quattro a usare il proprio vero nome è Bukowski; gli altri tre ricorrono ad altrettanti alter-ego che peraltro nascondono poco o nulla della reale identità dei personaggi. Capitolo 2. Lo scrittore e la malattia. Il capitolo si apre con l’analisi degli ultimi romanzi di Leonardo Sciascia, Il cavaliere e la morte (1988) e Una storia semplice (1989). Si prosegue con il testo più breve esaminato nella presente ricerca: “Nel frattempo”, racconto a fumetti di sei pagine realizzato da Magnus (nome d’arte di Roberto Raviola) nel 1996; si termina quindi con Le soleil des mourants, scritto da Jean-Claude Izzo nel 1999. Si tratta di opere realizzate nell’imminenza della morte (Una storia semplice, “Nel frattempo”) o comunque nella piena consapevolezza che la vita sta per giungere al termine (Il cavaliere e la morte, Le soleil des mourants). Nonostante ognuno dei quattro scritti contenga elementi autobiografici, nessuno di essi è puramente autobiografico: Sciascia scrive due polizieschi, Magnus una commedia, Izzo un dramma on the road. I quattro protagonisti sono accomnati da un fatto: tutti loro si confrontano con la malattia, reale (Il cavaliere e la morte, Le soleil des mourants) o metaforica (Una storia semplice, “Nel frattempo”) che sia. L’unico a uscire vincitore da questo confronto è il personaggio di Magnus; gli altri risultano tutti sconfitti, seppure in misura diversa (la sconfitta è totale per Izzo e lo Sciascia del Cavaliere e la morte, mentre è solo parziale in Una storia semplice). Capitolo 3. Lo scrittore e il suicidio. I testi analizzati nel terzo capitolo sono Le feu follet (Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, 1931), Dissipatio H.G. (Guido Morselli, 1973), “Good Old Neon” (David Foster Wallace, 2004) e Suicide (Édouard Levé, 2008). Realizzate da autori poi suicidatisi, queste quattro opere narrano le storie di altrettanti suicidi: tre sono biografie che ricostruiscono l’esistenza di persone realmente vissute (Feu follet racconta, romanzandola, la fine di Jacques Rigaut; “Good Old Neon” e Suicide si ispirano alla scomparsa di due conoscenti dei rispettivi autori), mentre la quarta (Dissipatio H.G.) è una vicenda di pura invenzione. Nonostante la presenza dei suddetti rimandi biografici, i quattro protagonisti sono caratterizzati in modo tale da divenire dei parziali alter-ego degli scrittori: la fedeltà biografica non è mai una priorità. Due di queste opere (Feu follet e Suicide) hanno uno sfondo estremamente realistico, mentre le altre due (Dissipatio H.G. e “Good Old Neon”) si svolgono in suggestivi scenari fantastico/fantascientifici, come a suggerire la volontà di abbandonare questo mondo che contraddistingue gli autori. Appendice. (In)consapevolezza di morire. I romanzi qui raccolti sono tre: Palomar (Italo Calvino, 1983), Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeo (Andrea Pazienza, 1987) e Camere separate (Pier Vittorio Tondelli, 1989). L’ultimo è stato scritto da un autore che sapeva di essere affetto da AIDS e che, pertanto, era consapevole che non sarebbe sopravvissuto molto (per quanto la natura della malattia lo autorizzasse a sperare che la fine fosse ancora lontana); gli altri due sono invece opera di scrittori che erano in buone condizioni di salute e non sospettavano che di lì a poco sarebbero morti; eppure, al termine dei rispettivi romanzi, essi uccidono i propri protagonisti (entrambi alter-ego). Il capitolo si occupa appunto di individuare la connessione, evidente o sotterranea che sia, tra il destino del personaggio e quello del suo autore. La condizione nella quale si giunge al termine della vita influenza inevitabilmente l’approccio alla scrittura. La relativa serenità che contraddistingue chi si avvia a morire in tarda età fa sì che il vecchio scrittore si dedichi principalmente a una narrativa apertamente autobiografica che ricorda il passato, in modo che egli lo possa rivivere ancora una volta prima di andarsene. Chi muore anzitempo e incolpevole, a causa di una malattia, guarda con rimpianto agli anni futuri che non avrà la possibilità di vivere: scrivere in questo stato d’animo conduce alla realizzazione di opere con una componente didattica, che mirano a trasmettere un messaggio universale. Il desiderio di raggiungere un ampio numero di lettori fa sì che l’autore ricorra alla narrativa di genere; alla base di tale atteggiamento c’è la volontà di esercitare una forma di controllo su un futuro a cui non si potrà assistere in prima persona. Lo scrittore suicida, infine, realizza con il proprio ultimo romanzo una lunga lettera d’addio: egli dimostra la propria volontà di evadere dal mondo dando vita a elaborati scenari di fantasia oppure descrivendo una realtà all’interno della quale si trova spaesato, fuori posto. In un caso come nell’altro, egli vuole fuggire da questo mondo per andare alla scoperta dell’altro. A prescindere dal tipo di morte che li attende, gli scrittori che hanno raggiunto l’ultima fase della propria vita non usano metafore o giri di parole: nelle proprie opere, essi presentano direttamente la propria situazione. Pertanto, i protagonisti dei loro romanzi-testamento sono anziani che riflettono sulla loro prossima morte, oppure persone mortalmente malate, oppure giovani uomini dalle chiare tendenza suicide: in poche parole, personaggi che sono alter-ego totali o parziali dei rispettivi creatori.
The aim of this doctoral thesis is to identify and to define a new and previously unseen literary sub-genre: the “testamentary novel”. By saying so, I embrace all the works of literature that have been written by an author who is living within the “dimension of death”, that is to say the stage of life in which the idea of death has become overwhelming. This may happen because of three main reasons: old age, severe illness or suicidal tendencies. Three different situations that originate three different kinds of narratives: a man who faces death in his old age writes relatively peacefully, knowing that he has naturally come to the end of his life; a man who dies prematurely, by illness, regrets all the future years that he won’t be able to live and writes works of literature that vibrate with narrative tension; a man who voluntarily gives an end to his own life addresses the whole world as if to defy it, and yet writes in a cold and detached style. After these three chapters there is an appendix in which I analyze three other novels: they were initially meant for the already existing chapters, but then I realized that they didn’t belong there, being quite eccentric and avoiding every clear classification, so I left them out. However, they were too pertinent to be totally ignored, so I put them in this separate section (that so became a sort of fourth chapter). Chapter 1. The old writer and death. In this first chapter I analyze the following novels: Deux anglaises et le continent (Henri-Pierre Roché, 1956), Mercy of a Rude Stream (Henry Roth, 1994-1998), The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (Charles Bukowski, 1998) and Ravelstein (Saul Bellow, 2000). Written by aged authors (spanning the age range 72 to 89, Bukowski being the “youngest” and Roth the oldest), these four narratives are either entirely or partially autobiographical: Roché tells a story about his long gone youth; Roth retraces (in a four-volumes and 1500 pages novel) the thirteen years he lived in Harlem as a kid, between 1914 and 1927; Bukowski keeps an actual diary in which he writes about his daily life; Bellow gives an accout of his friendship with the recently deceased Abe Ravelstein. The only writer who uses his real name in the narrative is Bukowski, whereas the other ones adopt three well recognizable alter-egos. Chapter 2. The writer and the illness. The second chapter begins with the last two novels written by Leonardo Sciascia, Il cavaliere e la morte (1988) and Una storia semplice (1989). These novels are followed by the shortest story analyzed in this thesis: “Nel frattempo”, a six-pages graphic novel that Magnus (Roberto Raviola’s nom de plume) wrote and drew in 1996; the second chapter is completed by Le soleil des mourants, a novel by Jean-Claude Izzo (1999). These narratives have been written by authors who were severely ill and were fully aware that they would die shortly. Each one of the four stories is partly autobiographical, but no one of them is completely autobiographical: Sciascia writes two detective novels, Magnus writes a sort of dark comedy and Izzo writes an extremely dramatic story which resembles a classic tragedy. The four protagonists have one thing in common: they all face illness, sometimes actual (Il cavaliere e la morte, Le soleil des mourants) and sometimes metaphorical (Una storia semplice, “Nel frattempo”). The only one of them who clearly wins this peculiar battle is Magnus’ character; the other ones all suffer a defeat (a total defeat in Le soleil des mourants and Il cavaliere e la morte, a partial defeat in Una storia semplice). Capitolo 3. The writer and suicide. The four works of literature analyzed in the third chapter are the following ones: Le feu follet (Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, 1931), Dissipatio H.G. (Guido Morselli, 1973), “Good Old Neon” (David Foster Wallace, 2004) and Suicide (Édouard Levé, 2008). Written by authors who have actually committed suicide, these narratives tell the stories of four suicidal men: three of them are biographical accounts (Feu follet tells about Jacques Rigaut’s suicide, while “Good Old Neon” and Suicide are inspired by the suicides committed some years before by two acquaintances of the authors), the fourth one is entirely fictional. However, these biographical accounts are deliberately inaccurate, so the characters portrayed by the writers become eventually their partial alter-egos. Two of the four narratives take place in a completely realistic setting; on the other hand, the background of the other two is imaginary and fantastic, as if to suggest the authors’ desire to leave the world he’s still living in. Appendix. (Un)aware to die. In this appendix, which is a sort of fourth chapter, three novels are analyzed: Palomar (Italo Calvino, 1983), Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeo (Andrea Pazienza, 1987) and Camere separate (Pier Vittorio Tondelli, 1989). The third one has been written by a man who was suffering from AIDS and was therefore aware that he wouldn’t survive much longer (even if he couldn’t foresee the specific moment of his future demise, of course); on the contrary, the two other novels have been written by two healthy men who couldn’t imagine that they would die a few months after having completed their works; nevertheless, at the end of their narratives they both kill their main character (who is clearly their alter-ego). There is indeed a connection between the death of the character and the death of the author, and this appendix aims to identify it. After having analyzed these fifteen narratives I realized that different kinds of death originate different kinds of writing. The man who dies in the relative peacefulness of his old age is naturally encouraged to write about his past life, so he can relive it one last time. When a man dies prematurely, because of an incurable disease, he regrets all the future years that he won’t be able to live: he writes a somehow educational work of literature, a novel containing a universal message that aims to teach something to the ones who will survive him; in order to reach the maximum amount of readers, he makes use of an “easy” genre, such as comedy or detective novel. He does so because he wants to use his narrative in order to exert a sort of influence over the future (even if, or just because, he knows that he won’t be there in person). The suicidal man writes his final novel as if it were a long suicide letter: he shows off his strong desire to leave this life by making up imaginary worlds or else describing a reality that doesn’t fit him, a world in which he just can’t find his proper place. Apart from the kind of death that awaits them, the writers who have reached the final stage of their life don’t use metaphors or circumlocution: in their novels, they plainly present their own situation. So, the main characters of their testamentary works of literature are old men who muse about dying, or persons severely ill, or young men with suicidal tendencies: in short, these characters are total or partial alter-egos who have the specific duty of standing in for their creators.

The paper aims to describe and analyze the specific loneliness of Walter Ferranini, the protagonist of “Il comunista”, by Guido Morselli (1976). Even though constantly searching for success and praise – as probably it was for Guido Morselli, too – Ferranini lives his grey, unsuccessful, unhappy life in a particular way, which makes him a silent, unrecognized hero, and which gives a special “light” to the full novel.

We now run through the first three ‘Foundations of Mindfulness’ with some simple exercises. (We shall return to the fourth foundation in Chapter 17). By a ‘foundation’ of mindfulness is meant a category of those things we can be mindful of. In this chapter there is a quick description of the four: 1. the bodily experience (e.g. skin sensations), 2. the pleasure/pain experience (e.g. an insect bite, a delicious morsel), 3. the meditational quality of the mind (e.g. whether it is concentrated or not), 4. a reflexive evaluation of one’s meditational journey and its landmarks (e.g. the struggle with hindrances and the cultivation of good will). Instructions are hen given for Walking Meditation, Standing Meditation and for the keeping of ‘states of mind’ diary. These lead to a recognition of the crucial breakthrough to ‘three marks of existence’: anxiety or suffering, impermanence, and not-self (insubstantiality).