The novel as investigation Cannon, JoAnn
The novel as investigation,
c2006, 20060725, 2006, 2014, 2006-01-01
eBook
Detective fiction is a universally popular genre; stories about the investigation of a crime by a detective are published all over the world and in hundreds of languages. Detective fiction provides ...more than entertainment, however; it often has a great deal to say about crime and punishment, justice and injustice, testimony and judgment.The Novel as Investigationexamines a group of detective novels by three important Italian writers - Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi - whose conviction about the ethical responsibility of the writer manifests itself in their investigative fiction.
Jo-Ann Cannon explores each writer's denunciation of societal ills in two complementary texts. These investigative novels shed light on pressing social ills, which are not particular to Italian society of the late twentieth century but are universal in scope: Sciascia focuses on abuses of power and the death penalty, Maraini on violence against women, Tabucchi on torture and police brutality. In addition, each of these texts self-reflexively explore the role of writing in society. Sciascia, Maraini, and Tabucchi all use their fiction to defend the power of the pen to address "il male del mondo."
The Novel as Investigationwill be of interest to a broad audience of readers, including those interested in Italian and comparative literature, Italian social history, and cultural studies.
Postmodern Ethics offers a new perspective on debates surrounding the role of the intellectual in Italian society, and provides an original reading of two important Italian contemporary writers, ...Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi. It examines the ways in which the two writers use literature to engage with their socio-political environment in a climate informed by the doubts and scepticism of postmodernism, after traditional forms of impegno had been abandoned. Postmodern Ethics explores ways in which Tabucchi and Sciascia further their engagement through embracing the very factors which problematized traditional committed writing, such as the absence of fixed truths, the inability of language to fully communicate ideas and intertextuality. Postmodern Ethics provides an innovative new reading of Tabucchi's works. It challenges the standard view in critical literature that his writing may be divided into 'engaged' texts which dialogue with society and 'postmodern' texts which focus on literary interiority, suggesting instead that socio-political engagement underpins all of his works. It also offers a new lens on Sciascia's writing, unpacking why Sciascia, unlike his contemporaries, is able to maintain a belief in literature as a means of dialoguing with society. Postmodern Ethics explores the ways in which Tabucchi and Sciascia approach issues of terrorism, justice, the anti-mafia movement, immigration and the value of reading in connected yet distinct ways, suggesting that a close genealogy may be drawn between these two key intellectual figures.
The work of A. Tabucchi, one of Italy’s greatest contemporary writers, is imbued with the topic of individual identity. His texts query the self-perception, the relation with the Other and the ...relation with the historical and cultural world while expressing at all these levels an experience of dissolution: the self is fragmented and fragile; the Other is always absent and missed, and instead of being engaged in the present world, the subject lives in an intangible reality that does not make any sense. This profound existential anxiety and the weakening of identity are emphasized by the very way of narrating of Tabucchi which is disconnected, enigmatic and full of silences. The book by Pia Schwarz Lausten describes various manifestations of the above-mentioned experience through the textual analysis of a series of figures and motives such as memory and absence, reversal and multiplicity, the said and the unsaid, history and commitment. Some of these motives involve on the one hand existential and philosophical aspects, and on the other aesthetical and literary values. The analysis is based on two theoretical perspectives that in different ways describe an overcoming of a classical subjectivity in favour of an idea of which the Other or Alterity is an essential element to the definition of individual identity: M. Bachtin’s concept of “dialogism” and G. Vattimo’s “weak thought”. The former serves to define the narrating subject in Tabucchi’s texts characterized by different discourse levels and others’ words. The latter concept describes the position of the subject of post-modernity determined by a weakening of the strong structures of modern thought. The book is written in Italian. Pia Schwarz Lausten, PhD, is post doc at the Departement of English, German and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
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