Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was the author of many influential novels and remains one of the most significant Italian women writers of her time. However, critics tend to pigeonhole her works into convenient literary categories and to ignore the uniqueness of her style and voice. Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity offers a timely and thought-provoking interpretation of this Nobel laureate, examining her work in the context of European philosophical and literary modernity.

Margherita Heyer-Caput takes a philosophical and philological approach in order to provide a reassessment of Deledda's position in the literary canon. At the same time, she raises the larger issue of the status of allegedly 'regional' or 'minor' literatures within the context of Italian modernity. Dealing with four novels representative of Deledda's vast corpus, Heyer-Caput addresses and dismantles elements of regionalismo, verismo, and decadentismo, labels with which Deledda's works are regularly associated. This is the first volume to introduce some of Deledda's overlooked texts to an Anglophone audience. It invites readers to overturn established critical categories and to question margin-centre hierarchies both in the broad context of literary modernity and the narrower frame of Deledda's writing.

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity is a highly original and innovative interpretation of Deledda's narrative in philosophical perspective, which also includes the study of textual variations and considers cultural history in Italy during the early twentieth century. It is a much-needed examination of an important writer and how she managed to construct her own literary and gender identity in the context of modernity.

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Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was the author of many influential novels and remains one of the most significant Italian women writers of her time. However, critics tend to pigeonhole her works into convenient literary categories and to ignore the uniqueness of her style and voice. Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity offers a timely and thought-provoking interpretation of this Nobel laureate, examining her work in the context of European philosophical and literary modernity.

Margherita Heyer-Caput takes a philosophical and philological approach in order to provide a reassessment of Deledda's position in the literary canon. At the same time, she raises the larger issue of the status of allegedly 'regional' or 'minor' literatures within the context of Italian modernity. Dealing with four novels representative of Deledda's vast corpus, Heyer-Caput addresses and dismantles elements of regionalismo, verismo, and decadentismo, labels with which Deledda's works are regularly associated. This is the first volume to introduce some of Deledda's overlooked texts to an Anglophone audience. It invites readers to overturn established critical categories and to question margin-centre hierarchies both in the broad context of literary modernity and the narrower frame of Deledda's writing.

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity is a highly original and innovative interpretation of Deledda's narrative in philosophical perspective, which also includes the study of textual variations and considers cultural history in Italy during the early twentieth century. It is a much-needed examination of an important writer and how she managed to construct her own literary and gender identity in the context of modernity.

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Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

by Margherita Heyer-Caput
Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity

by Margherita Heyer-Caput

eBook

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Overview

Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was the author of many influential novels and remains one of the most significant Italian women writers of her time. However, critics tend to pigeonhole her works into convenient literary categories and to ignore the uniqueness of her style and voice. Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity offers a timely and thought-provoking interpretation of this Nobel laureate, examining her work in the context of European philosophical and literary modernity.

Margherita Heyer-Caput takes a philosophical and philological approach in order to provide a reassessment of Deledda's position in the literary canon. At the same time, she raises the larger issue of the status of allegedly 'regional' or 'minor' literatures within the context of Italian modernity. Dealing with four novels representative of Deledda's vast corpus, Heyer-Caput addresses and dismantles elements of regionalismo, verismo, and decadentismo, labels with which Deledda's works are regularly associated. This is the first volume to introduce some of Deledda's overlooked texts to an Anglophone audience. It invites readers to overturn established critical categories and to question margin-centre hierarchies both in the broad context of literary modernity and the narrower frame of Deledda's writing.

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity is a highly original and innovative interpretation of Deledda's narrative in philosophical perspective, which also includes the study of textual variations and considers cultural history in Italy during the early twentieth century. It is a much-needed examination of an important writer and how she managed to construct her own literary and gender identity in the context of modernity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781442692831
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Publication date: 06/14/2008
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Margherita Heyer-caput is an associaet professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of California, Davis.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     3
'On the Way' to Modernity: La via del male     21
From L'indomabile to La via del male: Social Mission and Positivism     22
A Social (and Literary) Mission     25
The 'Scuola positiva di diritto penale'     30
From La via del male (1896) as The Path to Evil to La via del male (1906) as The Path of Evil     36
Linguistic Changes: Against Approximation     37
Linguistic Changes: Against 'Aulicismo'     40
From La via del male (1906) to La via del male (1916): Inconsistent Revision or Intellectual Independence?     42
Toward Formal 'Simplification' (Herczeg) and Modernity     46
Toward the 'Unified' Italian Middle Class     58
Toward the Proliferation of Interpretations     63
Thematic Changes toward Modernity     66
The Journey Theme     66
The Madness Motif     71
The Radical Openness     73
Structural Changes     74
Language, Culture, and Power     78
Female Point of View and Open Ending     82
Language and Open Journey     90
A Partial Conclusion     92
The Transgressive Rewriting of the Novel of Formation: Cenere     95
Cenere: Whose Bildungsroman?     97
Cenere as a Male Bildungsroman     98
Intertextuality and Male Bildungsroman     101
Nietzsche's Moral Critique and Bildungsroman     106
Cenere as a Female Bildungsroman     109
Cenere's Revisions and the Rewriting of the Bildungsroman     112
Deledda and the 'Seventh Art'     135
Duse's Cenere and the Resymbolization of the Female Bildungsroman     141
A Partial Conclusion     152
Active Nihilism and Nietzsche's Uebermensch: Il segreto dell'uomo solitario     154
Nietzsche Reception in Italy during the Early 1900s     157
Open Narrative Structure and Metaphorical 'S'     165
Nietzschean Themes of Modernity     168
Mind and Body     168
The Notion of Truth     171
The Secret of Madness     175
Active Nihilism     177
Nietzsche's Zarathustra     180
Toward a Morality of Modernity: A Partial Conclusion     185
Passive Nihilism and Schopenhauer's Contemplator: La danza della collana     188
The 'Scarnificazione' of the Narrative Structure     190
Topoi of Modernity: The Double and the Mask     193
Schopenhauerian Themes of Modernity      195
The Dualism between Phenomenon and Noumenon     195
The Aesthetics of Contemplation and Music     196
The Ethics of Compassion and Asceticism     197
A Step Back: Schopenhauer's Veil and Deledda's Colombi e sparvieri     198
Schopenhauer Reception in Italy during the Early 1900s     210
Schopenhauerian Themes of Modernity and La danza della collana     225
The Oscillation between Phenomenon and Noumenon     225
The Letter Episode and the Liberation from Illusions     227
The Ultimate Liberation through Asceticism     232
The Liberatory Role of Music in Deledda's Dance of and with Modernity     235
An Open-Ended Conclusion     240
Notes     243
Bibliography     273
Index     291
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