Il Fantastico e gli Oggetti del primo Novecento

This research project proposes to investigate the manner in which early twentieth century fantasy used the fictional representation of objects for its own emergence. The hypothesis is that certain representation schemes elaborated by authors of nineteenth century fantastic literature, such as Hoffman, Poe and Maupassant, also appear in twentieth century literature, reemployed in response to the changing sociocultural situation. The thesis is divided in two: the first part, itself subdivided in two chapters, functions as a theoretical and historical framework for the textual analysis. The concept of the image is discussed and precise ideas of literary space and object are defined. This is followed by a reconstruction of nineteenth century fantasy (theoretical and, particularly, genealogical reflections are not lacking), which, on the one hand, is aimed at historicizing the idea of the “fantastic genre”; and on the other, intends to identify a typology of objects structurally connected to this narrative variety. Two are the classes of objects defined, and equal in number are the chapters structuring the second part of the work. Both types of objects, which for simplicity's sake will be called fetish-objects and ghostly objects, are halfway between fantasy and the real. Yet while the fetish-object has something more with respect to a realistically described object, the ghostly object lacks something and thus does not manage to completely materialize. Among the authors discussed are Papini, Pirandello, Bontempelli, Savinio and Landolfi; while references to authors of other nations abound, from Kafka to Sartre, from James to Virginia Woolf, in keeping with the consideration of the Italian fantastic genre within a broader literary geography.