عنوان

Carlo Emilio Gadda's Junk and Other Vibrant Matter in Milan and Maradagàl

LA5v9340ws

انگلیسی

Carlo Emilio Gadda's Junk and Other Vibrant Matter in Milan and Maradagàl

[Article]

Falkoff, Rebecca Ruth

This article considers the figure of the tangle (be it a garbuglio, gomitolo, gnommero, or guazzabuglio), emblematic of Carlo Emilio Gadda's narrative architecture and philosophy. The garbuglio and its variations, like the "vibrant matter" recently theorized by Jane Bennett, enmesh human and nonhuman matter in a fabric of relations so dense that no element can be subtracted from the global whole. Understanding uselessness not as a quality intrinsic to matter, but as a relationship of exteriority, this article examines iterations of uselessness-and accordingly, forms of subtraction-in Gadda: of human and nonhuman matter from larger tangles (whether linguistic, narrative, economic, or social). The stakes of these forms of subtraction, I argue, come into focus in La cognizione del dolore in a tension between "ethics" and "charity" that demonstrates Gadda's disillusionment with fascism-and particularly with fascist mothers who, like Volumnia of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, would sacrifice their sons to the "ethical" imperatives of the state.

2014

California Italian Studies

5/2

Falkoff, Rebecca Ruth

[Article]

275578

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