Image, Eye and Art in Calvino
Writing Visibility

Edited by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin and Lene Waage Petersen

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

23 February 2007  •  316pp

ISBN: 978-1-904350-59-0 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ItalianArt


Few recent writers have been so interested in the cross-over between texts and visual art as Italo Calvino (1923-85). Involved for most of his life in the publishing industry, he took as much interest in the visual as in the textual aspects of his own and other writers' books. In this volume twenty Calvino experts from across the world consider the many facets of the interplay between the visual and textual in Calvino's works, from the use of colours in his fiction to the influence of cartoons, from the graphic qualities of the book covers themselves to the significance of photography and landscape in his fiction and non-fiction. The volume is appropriately illustrated with images evoked by Calvino's major texts.

Research into what Calvino saw with his eyes shut - Esther Calvino

Birgitte Grundtvig is Assistant Research Professor of Italian at the University of Copenhagen; Martin McLaughlin is FIAT-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford; Lene Waage Petersen is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Copenhagen.

Reviews:

  • ‘Andrea Battistini's chapter, finally, is one of the most enjoyable; it could be defined as the critical equivalent of Eco’s novel La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana, in the sense that it shows quite convincingly how the "fantastic iconology of cartoons" and comic books is deeply rooted in Calvino's imagination and how this could be traced in his narrative style, also testifying to the extent of Calvino's engagement with the products of mass culture.’ — Pierpaolo Antonello, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 210-12 (full text online)
  • ‘These notes give but a hint of the richness of Image, Eye and Art in Calvino. This is a compelling volume for Calvino scholars; it should also have a strong appeal for those more generally interested in the relation between the verbal and the visual.’ — Luca Pocci, Angles on the English-Speaking World 8, 2008, 127-29
  • ‘A vital tool for further research not only into the works of Calvino but also into the contemporary cultural interweaving of literature and the arts.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Contents:

1-2

Le Square
Esther Calvino

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3-11

Introduction
Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin, Lene Waage Petersen

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12-25

Calvino’s Colours
Marco Belpoliti

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26-47

Colours, Landscapes and the Senses in Difficult Loves
Martin McLaughlin

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48-59

The Visual in Cosmicomics: Myth and Classical Rhetoric
Margarethe Hagen

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60-75

Images and Scientific Knowledge in Calvino
Mario Porro

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76-88

Recreating Visibility in Literary Translation: How to Code Space in Italian and in Danish
Hanne Jansen

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89-106

The Significance of Visibility: Interpreting the Image in Calvino
Lene Waage Petersen

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108-121

Innanzi Tutto, Aprire Leggermente, Ovvero... Contemplations About Language: Verbosities, Infelicities, Nonsensicalities, Oddities
Douglas Hofstadter

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122-140

Calvino at Play: Rules and Games for Writing in Space
Stefano Bartezzaghi

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141-151

The Dizzying Gaze: Calvino’s Thesis, the First Novel, and Conrad as a Model of Visibility
Maria José Calvo Montoro

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152-170

‘From the Vantage Point of Hindsight’: Viewing Calvino’s Landscape
Domenico Scarpa

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171-184

‘Leaning from the Steep Slope...’: The Fall of the Cartographic Eye in Calvino’s Late Works
Birgitte Grundtvig

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185-200

Language and the Brain’s ‘Mental Cinema’
Martin Skov, Frederik Stjernfelt, Olaf B. Paulson

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202-211

From Picasso to Dürer: Calvino’s Book Covers
Mario Barenghi

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212-229

Italo Calvino and the Fantastic Iconology of Cartoons
Andrea Battistini

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230-243

The Photographic Image: Calvino ‘in Dialogue’ with Barthes, Sontag, and Baudrillard
Ulla Musarra-Schrøder

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244-252

Ekphrasis: The Problem of Representing Visual Art in the Works of Italo Calvino and Per Højholt
Annette Fryd

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253-259

Signs and Visuality in Italo Calvino’s Narratives
Hans Lund

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260-276

Calvino and Klee: Variations of Line
Franco Ricci

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278-284

The Painter of Absence
Italo Calvino

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285-288

The Arrow in the Mind: A Review of ‘The Mechanism of Meaning’
Italo Calvino

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289-298

Calvino’s Flat in Rome: An Imagined Space
Ulrik Heltoft

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Bibliography entry:

Grundtvig, Birgitte, Martin McLaughlin, and Lene Waage Petersen (eds), Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility (Legenda, 2007)

First footnote reference: 35 Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility, ed. by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin and Lene Waage Petersen (Legenda, 2007), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Grundtvig, McLaughlin, and Petersen, p. 47.

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

Bibliography entry:

Grundtvig, Birgitte, Martin McLaughlin, and Lene Waage Petersen (eds). 2007. Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Grundtvig, McLaughlin, and Petersen 2007: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Grundtvig, McLaughlin, and Petersen 2007: 21.

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


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