Naslov
Complicity between the Character and the City: Urban Dynamics in the Contemporary Italian Novel

Autori
Mihaljević, Nikica ; Brzica, Anamarija

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
1st international conference of the Helsinki Literature and the City Network (HLCN): City Peripheries / Peripheral Cities

Mjesto i datum
Helsinki, Finska, 29.08.2013. - 30.08.2013

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
public space; private space; mnemonic images; Italian contemporary novel

Sažetak
In this paper it is examined the typology of verbal expression of urban space as literary memory, i.e. various types of heterotopias and alteration of literary space syntax are analyzed in order to comprehend the dynamics of urban environment in the literary text. The research focuses on some Italian contemporary novels in which the cityscape of Rome is represented as inseparable from the self ; more precisely, the cityscape is experienced as the memory of the self, or as a part of the process of the self discovery. However, not only the displacement from the public to private space is studied, but also the heterotopy from the city periphery to the centre and vice versa, which reveals the existential anxiety of an individual in the modern society. For example, in Tommaso Giartosio’s novel "L’O di Roma", the letter “O” describes the imaginary geographical division between the periphery and the centre of Rome, but it also indicates the constraints of the inner self of the character, which feels restrained in the attempt to exteriorize the distress. Hence, in this novel it is possible to examine spatial, psychological, and emotional borders within the city. The analysis starts from the studies of intersection of public and private space in the modern urban novel, in which often boundaries dividing private and public space are abandoned (Wirth-Nesher), and the studies which assert that the pressure of life in the urban centres can help the individual to define and exteriorize his identity (Alter), as well as from the studies where the disquieting postmodern metropolis is examined as the character, i.e. the city is seen as an organism. (Godono, Borelli).

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA