Naslov
From Urbanity to Urbanophobia: Rethinking Space and Memory in the Collection of Short Stories Genova d'autore

Autori
Mihaljević, Nikica

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Performing Memories: Media, Creation, Anthropology, and Remembrance

Urednik/ci
Biotti, Gabriele

Izdavač
Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Grad
Cambridge

Godina
2021

Raspon stranica
303-320

ISBN
978-1-5275-6660-6

Ključne riječi
individual memory ; collective memory ; cityscape ; space ; Italian literature

Sažetak
In this chapter, we analyse the plurality of memories created as a result of confrontation between the past and the present time, individual and collective memory, but, first of all, as an encounter between space and memory. In the collection of short stories Genova d'autore , the urban structure of Genoa is perceived, described and lived through the individual memory of characters, which is closely connected to the collective memory. The collective memory of the city of Genoa features a complex and multilayered dynamics of different individual memories which converge in the space of social and cultural memory. Here, it is useful to remember Bertrand Westphal's words when he affirms that “[a]t the beginning of the twenty-first century, the coordinates of time and space must be correlated ; certainly, they are inextricably meshed” (Westphal, 2011, p. 26). This intersection of the historical and personal events is the point in which the urban space becomes fundamental: It allows us to discover the transformation of Genoa, from a revolutionary and progressive city, where the social interaction was of central importance, to the city of urban alienation and depression. At the same time, it influences the attitude and the behaviour of its residents, which also change. In the chapter we address the question whether Genoa might be the specimen of any Italian city nowadays, while its residents the specimens of any human, in the representation of the individual and the collective memory. In this regard, of great help is Hana Wirth-Nesher's approach to the representation of the city in narrative which she presented in 1996 and in which she examines four aspects of the cityscape: the "natural", the built, the human and the verbal. The presence or the absence of these aspects in the delineation of the urban structure of Genoa will be at the centre of our attention in this analysis and will lead us to conclude how memory, the individual or/and the collective one, is connected to the representation of the space.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA