metafinzione nelle opere di Luigi Malerba by Anna Chiafele A thesis submitted in conformity with ...

282 Pages·2010·1.22 MB·Italian

Ironia: metafinzione nelle opere di Luigi Malerba

by

Anna Chiafele

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Italian Studies
University of Toronto

© Copyright by Anna Chiafele (2010)
ii
ABSTRACT - Ironia: metafinzione nelle opere di Luigi Malerba - PhD 2010 –
Anna Chiafele - Graduate Department of Italian Studies - University of Toronto

In questa tesi si discute di ironia e di metafinzione in alcune opere di Luigi
Malerba (1927-2008). La metafinzione è un elemento peculiare che caratterizza l’intera
opera dell’autore; questo studio vuole dimostrare come i principali lavori di Malerba
rivolgano costantemente l’attenzione a sé stessi. Questa letteratura narcisista incoraggia il
lettore a porsi numerose domande sulla relazione esistente tra fiction e realtà. L’ironia
inoltre sprona a compiere un’indagine sul linguaggio visto come un sistema di segni.
Grazie a continui giochi di parole e a distorsioni lessicali, Malerba rimuove la certezza
che esista una corrispondenza univoca tra significante e significato.
Nel primo capitolo si discutono alcune delle primissime opere dell’autore: Le
lettere di Ottavia (1956), Il serpente (1966), Salto mortale (1968) e Il protagonista
(1973). L’intero capitolo si sviluppa attorno al tema della creazione di mondi possibili e,
quindi, anche di mondi finzionali. Attraverso quest’analisi i confini tra fiction e realtà
appaiono alquanto labili; viene dimostrato, infatti, come questi siano una costruzione
illusoria dell’uomo contemporaneo, che è abituato a pensare secondo un’opposizione
binaria, quale realtà e sogno, realtà e finzione. Questi primi lavori sono accomunati da
una marcata ricerca ontologica.
Nel secondo capitolo procedo esaminando Storie dell’anno mille (1977), Il
pataffio (1978), I cani di Gerusalemme (1988) e Le maschere (1995); questi sono i lavori
più storici dell’autore. Il tema centrale dell’intero capitolo verte sul concetto di storia e di
fabulazione e sulla loro stretta connessione. In quest’analisi predomina il pensiero di
iii
Hayden White: la storia è un costrutto verbale e fa parte del discorso umano. Similmente
ad uno scrittore, anche lo storico riordina gli eventi del passato grazie ad un processo di
intramazione, che lo porta ad eliminare o evidenziare alcuni aspetti degli avvenimenti su
altri. La forma che la narrazione storica assume influisce notevolmente sul significato
degli eventi narrati. Qui si mette in evidenza l’abilità di Malerba di leggere la storia e di
riaprirla al presente.
Nel terzo capitolo si vogliono discutere tre opere il cui elemento dominante
sembra essere l’epistemologia: Le pietre volanti (1992), La superficie di Eliane (1999) e
Il circolo di Granada (2002). Questi romanzi incoraggiano di continuo il lettore a
domandarsi come circolino e come vengano condivise le informazioni, ma soprattutto
quali siano i limiti della conoscenza umana. Qua si vuole dimostrare come l’autore usi il
romanzo poliziesco in una maniera sperimentale fino al punto di trasformare queste sue
opere in romanzi anti-polizieschi. In questi lavori, l’indagine non conduce ad alcuna
soluzione soddisfacente. Alla fine della narrazione le numerose ipotesi dell’investigatore
non possono essere scartate. Per questo il lettore si trova di fronte a quanto Tani definisce
una “fiction of possibilities”, una finzione dove proliferano le possibilità.
Il romanzo Fantasmi romani occupa l’intero quarto capitolo. Qui analizzo le
ragioni per cui quest’ultimo lavoro possa essere considerato un vero o proprio testamento
letterario, un romanzo-testamento, di Luigi Malerba. Il lettore vi trova tutte quelle
caratteristiche che hanno contraddistinto la scrittura dell’autore per oltre quarant’anni.
Oltre a rintracciare e riconoscere le peculiarità dell’autore, i lettori possono apprezzare
anche delle evoluzioni e sviluppi nella narrazione. Quest’opera favorisce una riflessione
sul rapporto che si viene ad instaurare tra scrittore e lettore.
iv
Alla fine della tesi, vengono dati alcuni suggerimenti su come ampliare la ricerca.
Queste proposte si concentrano soprattutto sulla letteratura per l’infanzia dell’autore.
Quest’aspetto, infatti, ha sinora ricevuto poca attenzione da parte della critica.
v
ABSTRACT - Irony: metafiction in Luigi Malerba’s works - PhD 2010 -
Anna Chiafele - Graduate Department of Italian Studies - University of Toronto

In this thesis I address both irony and metafiction in novels of Italian writer Luigi
Malerba (1927-2008). Metafiction is a feature which characterizes all of his works; it will
be showed that Malerba’s works constantly draw attention to themselves and
consequently encourage readers to pose questions about the relationship between fiction
and reality. Similarly, irony fosters further investigation about words meant to be
understood as signs; through recurrent word games, Malerba removes the certainty of a
univocal existing correspondence between signifier and signified.
The first chapter addresses Malerba’s early works: Le lettere di Ottavia, Il
serpente, Salto mortale and Il Protagonista. Here the reader is encouraged to pose
ontological questions and wonder incessantly about his own world, about the fictional
world, and about the boundaries established between them. Fictional worlds are to be
interpreted as possible worlds and, as such, they are human artifacts. Their existence
depends on somebody’s propositional attitude; in order to exist fictional worlds must
therefore be imagined. (McHale 34). This analysis rests largely upon Pavel’s and
Doležel’s theories as expressed respectively in Fictional Worlds and Heterocosmica.
The explorations of both Il serpente and Salto mortale show first the realization of
a fictional world and then its dismantling. In these two novels, space and time become
subjective entities which are no longer able to guarantee any type of certainty. At times
they are even confused with one another. Although the narrator tries to make clear
distinctions between past and present, in the end the only time that exists is that of
vi
narration. All events indeed converge into the present, into the act of narrating; here
descriptions cannot be made, and if attempted, they are soon modified. Descriptions
appear in the text only to be contradicted continuously.
The novels’ plots, their spatial-temporal dimensions, and even their main
characters are introduced only to be later skillfully cancelled; what remains is human
thought. Totally uncontested, this reality in itself appears to move in infinite directions
with no boundaries at all. The human mind and its creative potential are central to both Il
serpente and Salto mortale. Strictly connected to human thought is language. In these
first two novels, more than in any other subsequent work by Malerba, the author plays
with language itself; he distorts words, dissolves conventional syntactic structures, and
overloads inappropriate meanings (signifieds) to one signifier. These distortions, a misuse
and abuse of human speech, prove language to be inadequate to express human thoughts.
The research on these novels proceeds with an analysis of their major characters:
a stamp collector who owns a shop of rare stamps in the novel Il serpente, and Giuseppe,
alias Giuseppe, in Salto mortale. The stamp collector is a very solitary man, who creates
for himself a fictional world where he meets Miriam, his lover. Due to his lacerating
solitude and abnormal propositional attitude, he cannot separate the real world from his
imaginary world. He encounters problems in detaching from his fictional ego, and thus
transmigrates into a secondary reality. The stamp collector thereafter is unable to
perceive the difference between the “paramount reality” (Berger and Luckmann 25) and
the secondary one; this incapacity explains his belief in having murdered Miriam.
Similarly, the male protagonists of Salto mortale may be perceived as products of the
vii
narrator’s imagination. Interestingly, they all carry the same name, Giuseppe, and they all
disappear, one after the other, as the narrating voice fades away at the end of the novel.
The novel Il protagonista provides another good example of an escape into a
virtual world, the world of radio amateurs. The two main characters of these novels are
Capoccia and Elisabella, a pair that spends hours on the radio waves talking to and
arousing one other. Capoccia’s genital organ is the narrator of the story and he constantly
boasts about his abilities to have and maintain an erection, and then penetrate any hole
available. He also claims to be fierce and have the potency of a bazooka. His words are
amply challenged once he meets Elisabella.
In the world of radio amateurs, the virtual one, Capoccia and Elisabella like each
other and experience a reciprocal attraction. Once they cross that virtual boundary and
meet in Rome, Capoccia is surprised to discover he is not able to perform sexual
intercourse with his guest. In the meantime, however, he rapes other women as well as a
rotten whale. As the characters of this novel move from one world into another, they
transfer themselves from the secondary world, their imaginary world, into the primary
everyday world, and when they do so, they unable to interact.
The analysis of this work concludes with a discussion of language and irony. Of
primary interest is the fact that in this novel the narrator faces several difficulties
completing any type of description, especially those concerning himself, a penis. His
attempts are numerous and he proceeds with various comparisons. This inability shows
once more the marked gap between signifier and signified. We are left therefore with the
impossibility of the conveyance of one univocal meaning, a major theme throughout the
entire production of Malerba. This first chapter thus proves that boundaries between
viii
reality and fiction, dreaming or daydreaming are quite ephemeral. Boundaries are indeed
created by mankind and as such they exist only as a convention accepted by a society
where human beings tend to think according to a reassuring pattern of binary oppositions.
In the second chapter I discuss the relationship between history and fiction in the
following works: Storie dell’anno mille (1977), Il pataffio (1978), I cani di Gerusalemme
(1988) and Le maschere (1955). This analysis is largely based on thoughts expressed by
Hayden White in his Metahistory and Figural Realism. Here the scholar stresses how
historical facts are accessible to human beings only by way of language; therefore, they
are linguistic entities and they belong to discourse. He furthers his claim with an
explanation of the operation of “emplotment”. Historians form history by connecting
pure chronicles and then giving them tragic, comic, romantic or even satiric tones; events
in themselves have no connotation. Using this analysis in approaching Malerba’s works,
we find once more the impossibility of a singular univocal reality, as there is not only one
reality available but rather a multiplicity of them.
The second chapter is divided into two major parts: in the first one, Malerba’s
middle ages is examined; in the second one, the novel Le maschere is considered. Both
sections contain lengthy discussions on those works by Malerba in which scholars to date
have shown little interest. The study of Malerba’s middle ages is also supported by works
of film scholars such as Brunetta and Attolini. Here I point out the prevalence of the
character/movie Brancaleone in newspaper reviews of Storie dell’anno mille and Il
pataffio. Brancaleone is the protagonist of two movies by Mario Monicelli: L’armata
Brancaleone (1966) and Brancaleone alle crociate (1970). The plot of these movies is
well known in Italy and the expression “armata Brancaleone” (Brancaleone’s army) has
ix
entered everyday language to designate a group of poor, disorganized, and inefficient
people. Understanding why Brancaleone is often referenced in reviews of Malerba’s
works helps better comprehend the author’s approach to history. Furthermore, it is
showed how Malerba’s career proves to be such a good example of what Brunetta
addresses as permeability of a writer’s work into the work of a screenwriter and vice
versa (Storia del cinema 583).
The studies of Monicelli’s L’armata Brancaleone and Brancaleone alle crociate
underline two major interrelated themes present in these films: pellegrination and
transition. The constant and aimless wandering of Brancaleone’s army is considered to be
a metaphor of Italy in the 1970s, a time when the country was transitioning into a
capitalistic economy. In “Personaggi del Medioevo,” Attolini points out the
fragmentedness of the these movies and concludes that there is an evenemential approach
to history. Similar to Monicelli’s films, Malerba’s aforementioned works are often
permeated by pellegrination as well. As the characters in these novels wander aimlessly
without ever knowing their destination. Further more, these works are also fragmentary;
Le storie dell’anno mille, for example, is the story of three poor homeless people,
Pannocchia, Carestia and Millemosche, who spend their lives moving incessantly around
and fighting in order to satisfy basic needs. Their adventures can be narrated in any sort
of order since they resemble a series of disconnected anecdotes. In fact, Le storie
dell’anno mille was first published as seven separate children’s books between the years
of 1969 and 1973. In each of the medieval works examined in this chapter, the writer
seems to avoid imposing an organizing structure to the narrated events; therefore, the
episodes appear to belong to an everlasting present which can repeat itself over and over.
x
As far as Il pataffio is concerned, anachronisms in the thoughts and actions of both
Berlocchio and Migone are pointed out that underline a possible relationship between
Malerba’s middle ages and the Italian society of the 1970s.
The second part of this chapter is devoted completely to Le maschere, a long
historical novel which tends towards postmodernism. For this discussion I also analyze
the source that inspired Malerba in the writing of this novel: a voluminous Storia dei papi
dalla fine del Medio Evo by Ludwig Pastor. A comparison between Storia dei papi and
Le maschere helps us to comprehend Malerba’s attitude towards history and narration.
Part of the research rests upon Hayden White’s belief that as history is to be viewed as
discourse, historical accounts are to be remembered as containing fiction. Here I identify
textual elements from Storia dei papi that Malerba borrows and reworks in his Le
maschere.
Malerba’s modifications to Pastor’s text reveal interesting authorial commentary.
Like other writers of traditional historical novels, Malerba works within the “dark areas”
(McHale 87). Those are areas where “the “official” record has nothing to report”
(McHale 87). According to McHale, “within the “dark areas,” the historical novelist is
permitted a relatively free hand” (87). In this novel however, Malerba does not contradict
history at all, and in fact his work Le maschere is highly based on historical and
documented events. For example, the author talks about Pope Adrian VI and his election
and arrival in Rome, describing the laxity of the Roman clergy and depicting habits,
costumes and furnishings of that epoch. His descriptions are coherent with history and do
not oppose it; his words are indeed in line with the words of historians.