This article deals with Casella's re-reading of the representation of Sicily as a bucolic land. In his novel The Sensualist, he interprets the pastoral and picturesque representation of the Island as a form of escapism from the sterile and dead centre of the outback on which feelings of weird melancholy are projected. Deeply melancholic, its characters have a double feeling of hate towards a colonial past that continues to haunt them due to the lost innocence of the Australian colonial dream which turned into a discourse of violence, and love due to the hope of recreating that lost innocence and optimism and wash away the polluting memories of the past. However, there is no possibility of recreating such an innocence and for the melancholic subject the only way out is to search for it in a land which is spatially and temporally distant. By drawing on Freud and Kristeva, it will also be suggested that Casella seems to suggest that the white subjects of the novel, but also Australia's society, will always be haunted by their loss of innocence unless they rethink their white identity as fragmented and acknowledge the polluting memories of the past. And as a consequence, they will always need a place like Sicily as a fetish that recreates their fantasy of superiority. [From the journal's webpage]
Unveiling Absences, or Unsettling Multiculturalism, in Antonio Casella's The Sensualist and Venero Armanno's Romeo of the Underworld and The Volcano
Sicily
:
2012
Z1885040
2012
single work
thesis
This study investigates the relationship between the Gothic topoi present in the three novels analysed and the possible liminality of first and second migrant generations. Besides, it explores how this affects the narrative architecture of these novels dismantling their common interpretation as authentic and mimetic . In other words, as sociological and ethnographic documents. The parodic and sublime effects of both Gothic topoi and uncanny intertextuality, read as semiotic elements of a literature of the arrivant, deconstruct the monological narrations of the multicultural discourse in Australia. In brief, Whiteness , ethnocentrism and identity. Such an approach unveils those Lacanian absences , which support the narcissistic image of the white subject, thus paving the way for hybridity.
Scopo di questo studio è stato quello di analizzare gli elementi gotici presenti nei romanzi in esame al fine di evidenziarne il rapporto con il concetto di liminality delle varie generazioni di migranti e come la stessa venga veicolata dalla stessa struttura narrativa. Dunque, un rapporto tra forma e contenuto tendente a scardinare qualsiasi discorso di autenticità e mimesi che confina tali opere ad una sfera esclusivamente sociologica ed etnografica. L effetto parodico e sublime di questi topoi gotici e dell intertestualità, interpretati nella letteratura dell arrivant dei due autori come elementi semiotici, decostruiscono le narrazioni monologiche del multiculturalismo australiano. In breve, della Whiteness , dell etnocentrismo e dell identità. Tale approccio decostruttivo svela quelle assenze lacaniane fondanti l immagine narcisista del soggetto bianco e permette un discorso di soggettività ibrida .
Unveiling Absences, or Unsettling Multiculturalism, in Antonio Casella's The Sensualist and Venero Armanno's Romeo of the Underworld and The Volcano
Sicily
:
2012
Z1885040
2012
single work
thesis
This study investigates the relationship between the Gothic topoi present in the three novels analysed and the possible liminality of first and second migrant generations. Besides, it explores how this affects the narrative architecture of these novels dismantling their common interpretation as authentic and mimetic . In other words, as sociological and ethnographic documents. The parodic and sublime effects of both Gothic topoi and uncanny intertextuality, read as semiotic elements of a literature of the arrivant, deconstruct the monological narrations of the multicultural discourse in Australia. In brief, Whiteness , ethnocentrism and identity. Such an approach unveils those Lacanian absences , which support the narcissistic image of the white subject, thus paving the way for hybridity.
Scopo di questo studio è stato quello di analizzare gli elementi gotici presenti nei romanzi in esame al fine di evidenziarne il rapporto con il concetto di liminality delle varie generazioni di migranti e come la stessa venga veicolata dalla stessa struttura narrativa. Dunque, un rapporto tra forma e contenuto tendente a scardinare qualsiasi discorso di autenticità e mimesi che confina tali opere ad una sfera esclusivamente sociologica ed etnografica. L effetto parodico e sublime di questi topoi gotici e dell intertestualità, interpretati nella letteratura dell arrivant dei due autori come elementi semiotici, decostruiscono le narrazioni monologiche del multiculturalismo australiano. In breve, della Whiteness , dell etnocentrismo e dell identità. Tale approccio decostruttivo svela quelle assenze lacaniane fondanti l immagine narcisista del soggetto bianco e permette un discorso di soggettività ibrida .
