Utopian thinking as complement of human mind, especially in Modern Age, reached a major landmark in the 20th century. This period was characterised by the opposition between a problematic Utopia, which seemed at first to have found a perfect socio-political expression, and a progressive discontent whose result was the affirmation of Dystopia as a new literary genre. Although Dystopia can be considered for a long time as the narration of modernity, the last decades have shown how it can be outdated. Actually, collective consciousness, void of any fragment of past utopias, deprives Dystopia of its revolutionary value. Futhermore, nowadays the millenary anxieties at the basis of Dystopia risk to materialize: the actual destruction of human life, planet and civilization has already overcome the ‘worst possible’ of Dystopia. Departing from such overview, this Ph.D thesis analyses how Italian literature faced the turn from Dystopia to the advent of the Apocalyptic genre through four writers in the 20th century: Corrado Alvaro and his ‘despotic dystopia’; Guido Morselli’s solipsistic world; Paolo Volponi’s critique of factory and capitalism; and the “waste land” described by the last Carlo Cassola. Notably, Italian culture at the time was not very prone to accept and implement the dystopian literary form and its various sub-genres (such as Uchronia). Therefore, it is interesting to trace a hypothetical evolution that not only is deeply rooted in national history but also reflects current developments throughout Western thinking. The research carried out takes in consideration the relationships between utopia and dystopia in the four writers as rooted in the authors’s biography, characterized by different modalities of estrangement and centred on the recurrent figures of the stranger and the homecomer. The result is a peculiar approach to the persistence and failure of utopia on the one hand and the emergence of dystopia on the other, to the point of Apocalypse as extreme representation of the genre and its concurrent weakening.
Il pensiero utopico, attitudine e completamento della mente umana soprattutto a partire dall’età moderna, ha visto una significativa trasformazione nel corso del XX secolo. Questa nuova fase è caratterizzata dall’opposizione tra un’utopia problematica, che sembrava dapprima aver raggiunto una soddisfacente espressione socio-politica, e una progressiva delusione che porta all’affermazione della distopia come nuovo genere letterario. Sebbene la distopia possa essere considerata a lungo come la narrazione della modernità, gli ultimi decenni hanno mostrato come essa possa essere superata. Di fatto la coscienza collettiva, priva di qualsiasi residuo delle utopie passate, depotenzia il valore rivoluzionario della distopia, tanto più quando le ansie millenarie che la fondavano rischiano di materializzarsi: la distruzione della vita, del pianeta e della civiltà ha già superato il peggio possibile prefigurato dalla distopia. A partire da tale quadro, questa tesi di dottorato analizza come la letteratura italiana ha affrontato il passaggio dalla distopia al genere apocalittico attraverso quattro autori novecenteschi: Corrado Alvaro e la sua distopia dispotica; il mondo solipsistico di Guido Morselli; la critica alla fabbrica e al capitalismo di Paolo Volponi; la terra desolata descritta dall’ultimo Carlo Cassola. È importante notare che la cultura italiana del Novecento non era molto incline ad accettare ed accogliere la forma letteraria distopica e i suoi sottogeneri come, ad esempio, l’ucronia. Proprio questa resistenza rende interessante tracciare un’ipotetica evoluzione, non solo legata alla storia italiana ma anche alle trasformazioni del pensiero occidentale. La ricerca condotta considera le relazioni tra utopia e distopia nei quattro autori esaminati come radicate nella loro biografia, caratterizzate da diverse strategie di straniamento e centrata su due figure ricorrenti, lo straniero e il reduce. L’esito è un peculiare approccio alla persistenza e al fallimento dell’utopia da un lato, e all’emergere della distopia dall’altro, fino all’apocalisse come rappresentazione estrema e allo stesso tempo svuotamento del genere distopico.
Una sorta di familiarità con la fine del mondo: Alvaro, Morselli, Volponi, Cassola e l’utopia in Italia nel Novecento
Pellegrino, Giulia
2020-01-01
Abstract
Utopian thinking as complement of human mind, especially in Modern Age, reached a major landmark in the 20th century. This period was characterised by the opposition between a problematic Utopia, which seemed at first to have found a perfect socio-political expression, and a progressive discontent whose result was the affirmation of Dystopia as a new literary genre. Although Dystopia can be considered for a long time as the narration of modernity, the last decades have shown how it can be outdated. Actually, collective consciousness, void of any fragment of past utopias, deprives Dystopia of its revolutionary value. Futhermore, nowadays the millenary anxieties at the basis of Dystopia risk to materialize: the actual destruction of human life, planet and civilization has already overcome the ‘worst possible’ of Dystopia. Departing from such overview, this Ph.D thesis analyses how Italian literature faced the turn from Dystopia to the advent of the Apocalyptic genre through four writers in the 20th century: Corrado Alvaro and his ‘despotic dystopia’; Guido Morselli’s solipsistic world; Paolo Volponi’s critique of factory and capitalism; and the “waste land” described by the last Carlo Cassola. Notably, Italian culture at the time was not very prone to accept and implement the dystopian literary form and its various sub-genres (such as Uchronia). Therefore, it is interesting to trace a hypothetical evolution that not only is deeply rooted in national history but also reflects current developments throughout Western thinking. The research carried out takes in consideration the relationships between utopia and dystopia in the four writers as rooted in the authors’s biography, characterized by different modalities of estrangement and centred on the recurrent figures of the stranger and the homecomer. The result is a peculiar approach to the persistence and failure of utopia on the one hand and the emergence of dystopia on the other, to the point of Apocalypse as extreme representation of the genre and its concurrent weakening.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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Giulia Pellegrino - Una sorta di familiarità con la fine del mondo.pdf
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