The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli

ISBN-13: 9781906540500 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 204 str.

Sara (Ed) Fortuna

Opis

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 esthetical 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.

Spis treści

1. Introduction Part I: Language and (Inter-)Subjectivity 2. Between Affection and Discipline: Exploring Linguistic Tensions from Dante to Aracoeli 3. Seeing and Telling: Anamorphosis, Relational Identity, and Other Perspectival Perplexities in Aracoeli 4. Resisting Paranoia: Poesis and Politics in Aracoeli Part II: Psychoanalysis 5. The Lover of a Hybrid': Memory and Fantasy in Aracoel 6. Scene madri: Psychoanalytic Visions from Aracoeli to Volver 7. Baubo — Another and Additional Name of Aracoeli: Morante's Queer Feminism Part IIa: Intermezzo 8. Staging the Passion of Aracoeli Part III: Elsa e gli altri 9. Aracoeli and Gadda's La cognizione del dolore: Disturbed Sons, Disturbing Mothers 10. Politics and Sexuality in Pasolini's Petrolio 11. Between Italy and Spain: The Tragedy of History and the Salvific Power of Love in Elsa Morante and Maria Zambrano Part IV: Religion 12. The Womb of Dreams: Cabbalistic Themes and Images in Elsa Morante's Aracoeli 13. Morante and Weil: The Aporiae of History and the End of the Fairy Tale 14. Indian Traces: Aracoeli, Pasolini's L'odore dell'India, and Moravia's Un'idea dell'India

O autorze

Sara Fortuna