Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature
Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda

Deborah Amberson

Italian Perspectives 22

Legenda

30 January 2012  •  186pp

ISBN: 978-1-907975-26-4 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ISBN: 978-1-351192-63-7 (Taylor & Francis ebook)

ModernItalianFiction


Writing in 1926, Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) acknowledges his peculiarity within the Italian literary field by describing himself as a giraffe or a kangaroo in Italy’s beautiful garden of literature. Gadda’s self-characterization as exotic and even ungainly animal applies in equal measure to Italo Svevo (1861-1928) and Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920), authors who, like Gadda, thwarted efforts at critical classification. Yet the ostensible strangeness of these three Italian authors is diminished when their writing is considered within the framework of modernism, a label traditionally avoided by the Italian critical establishment. Indeed, within a modernism preoccupied with human embodiment, these Italian literary giraffes find their kin. Here, the central nexus of body, subjectivity and style that informs and binds the writing of Svevo, Tozzi and Gadda resonates with a modernist renegotiation and revalorization of a human body whose dignity and epistemological authority have been contested by social and technological modernity.

Deborah Amberson is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Florida.

Reviews:

  • ‘In conclusion, this is a very interesting book, which not only brings together three exceptional authors, but also focuses on original and stimulating perspectives. The work makes a very valid critical contribution, by dealing with a fascinating topic in a manner which is original and insightful.’ — Giuseppe Stellardi, Modern Language Review 109.3, July 2014, 828-29 (full text online)

Bibliography entry:

Amberson, Deborah, Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian Perspectives, 22 (Legenda, 2012)

First footnote reference: 35 Deborah Amberson, Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian Perspectives, 22 (Legenda, 2012), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Amberson, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Amberson, Deborah. 2012. Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian Perspectives, 22 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Amberson 2012: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Amberson 2012: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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