Calvino and the Pygmalion Paradigm

ISBN-13: 9781784623296 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 252 str.

Bridget Tompkins

Opis

Calvino and the Pygmalion Paradigm: Fashioning the Feminine in I nostri antenati and Gli amori difficili is the first book-length analysis of the representation of the feminine in Calvinos fiction. Using the structural umbrella of the Pygmalion paradigm and using feminist interpretative techniques, this book offers interesting alternative readings of two of Calvinos important early narrative collections. The Pygmalion paradigm concerns the creation by a male artist of a feminine ideal and highlights the artificiality and narcissistic desire associated with the creation process. This book discusses Calvinos active and deliberate work of self-creation, accomplished through extensive self-commentaries and exposes both the lack of importance Calvino placed on the feminine in his narratives and the relative absence of critical attention focused on this area. Relying on the analogy between Pygmalions pieces of ivory and Barthes seme and drawing upon the ideas underlying Kristevan intertextuality, the book demonstrates that, despite Calvinos professed lack of interest in character development, his female characters are carefully and purposefully constructed. A close reading of Calvinos narratives, engaging directly with Freud, Lacan and the feminist psychoanalytical thinking of Kofmann, Kristeva, Kaplan and others, demonstrates how Calvino uses his female characters as foils for the existential reflections of his typically maladjusted and narcissistic male characters.