The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli

Sara Fortuna; Manuele Gragnolati

The Power of Disturbance
Elsa Morante's Aracoeli

Edited by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati

Cover of The Power of Disturbance

Elsa Morante (1912-85), Italian novelist

Gender and sexuality

56 other titles

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

17 July 2009 • 202pp

ISBN: 978-1-906540-50-0 (hardback) • RRP £80, $110, €95

ContemporaryItalianFiction

Aracoeli (1982) was the last novel written by Elsa Morante (1912-85), one of the most significant Italian writers of the twentieth century. The journey, both geographical and memorial, of a homosexual son in search of his dead mother is a first-person narrative that has puzzled many critics for its darkness and despair. By combining scholars from different disciplines and cultural traditions, this volume re-evaluates the aesthetic and theoretical complexity of Morante's novel and argues that it engages with crucial philosophical and epistemological questions in an original and profound way. Contributors explore the manifold tensions staged by the novel in connection with contemporary philosophical discourse (from feminist/queer to political theory to psycho-analysis) and authors (such as Emilio Gadda, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pedro Almodovar). The Power of Disturbance shows that by creating a 'hallucinatory' representation of the relationship between mother and child, Aracoeli questions the classical distinction between subject and object, and proposes an altogether new and subversive kind of writing.

Manuele Gragnolati is Reader in Italian Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Somerville College. Sara Fortuna teaches philosophy of language at the Università Guglielmo Marconi in Rome.

Reviews:

‘The chapters avail themselves of the entire arc of twentieth-century theories and models of subjectivity and sexuality, to try to unravel Manuele's search for freedom from his all-consuming passion for his mother Aracoeli, and include Freud, Jung, Klein, Bowlby, Stern, Sander, Winnicott, Laplanche and Pontalis, Kristeva, Lacan, Cavarero, Muraro, Silverman, (Jessica) Benjamin, and Butler. These theories serve the novel very well, illuminating the many strands and aspects of Manuele's 'condition' and of the novel... An invaluable teaching tool and thus an incentive to include Aracoeli in advanced university courses in Italian and European literature.’ — Adalgisa Giorgio, Italian Studies 66.1, March 2011, 144-46

Contents:

1-7	Introduction Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati	Cite
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8-19	Between Affection and Discipline: Exploring Linguistic Tensions from Dante to Aracoeli Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati	Cite
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20-29	Seeing and Telling: Anamorphosis, Relational Identity, and Other Perspectival Perplexities in Aracoeli Rebecca West	Cite
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30-41	Resisting Paranoia: Poesis and Politics in Aracoeli Florian Mussgnug	Cite
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42-58	‘The Lover of a Hybrid’: Memory and Fantasy in Aracoeli Christoph F. E. Holzhey	Cite
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59-72	Scene madri: Psychoanalytic Visions from Aracoeli to Volver Vittorio Lingiardi	Cite
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73-85	Baubo — Another and Additional Name of Aracoeli: Morante’s Queer Feminism Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky	Cite
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86-95	Staging the Passion of Aracoeli Agnese Grieco	Cite
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96-106	Aracoeli and Gadda’s La cognizione del dolore: Disturbed Sons, Disturbing Mothers Giuseppe Stellardi	Cite
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107-117	Politics and Sexuality in Pasolini’s Petrolio Francesca Cadel	Cite
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118-129	Between Italy and Spain: The Tragedy of History and the Salvific Power of Love in Elsa Morante and María Zambrano Elisa Martínez Garrido	Cite
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130-144	The Womb of Dreams: Cabbalistic Themes and Images in Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli Sergio Parussa	Cite
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145-160	Morante and Weil: The Aporiae of History and the End of the Fairy Tale Claude Cazalé Bérard	Cite
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161-176	Indian Traces: Aracoeli, Pasolini’s L’odore dell’India, and Moravia’s Un’idea dell’India Mimma Congedo	Cite
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Cite this volume in standard MHRA style

Bibliography entry:

Fortuna, Sara, and Manuele Gragnolati (eds), The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli (Cambridge: Legenda, 2009)

First footnote reference: ³⁵ The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli, ed. by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati (Cambridge: Legenda, 2009), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: ³⁷ Fortuna and Gragnolati, p. 47.

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Cite this volume in MHRA author-date style

Bibliography entry:

Fortuna, Sara, and Manuele Gragnolati (eds). 2009. The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli (Cambridge: Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Fortuna and Gragnolati 2009: 21).

Example footnote reference: ³⁵ Fortuna and Gragnolati 2009: 21.

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This Legenda title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

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Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Power-Disturbance

The Power of DisturbanceElsa Morante's Aracoeli

Edited by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati

The Power of Disturbance
Elsa Morante's Aracoeli