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Literary Criticism Italian

Difficult Games

A Reading of I Racconti by Italo Calvino

by (author) Franco Ricci

Publisher
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2006
Category
Italian, Literary, Short Stories
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780889206342
    Publish Date
    Jan 2006
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554585755
    Publish Date
    Sep 1990
    List Price
    $36.99

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Description

Examining Calvino's literary experiments as a young artist in search of his narrative voice, Ricci explores the psychological and existential motivations intrinsically linked to the writer's need for textual and systemic patterning. I racconti contains some of Calvino's least-read works, yet these early stories address issues, present scenarios and generate a growing variation of themes that form the heart of Calvino's narrative discourse. Ricci points out that melancholy permeates Calvino's works—even at his most playful. He suggests that if Calvino's highest merit was his sense of wonder and his urge to transform and defeat obscurantism with all the joy he could muster, one must remember that his work expressed, often painfully, the limits of human rationalism. I racconti can thus be read as a catalogue of the anxieties of both the young author and postwar Italian society.

About the author

Franco Ricci teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Ottawa. Specializing in contemporary Italian literature, he has published numerous articles on Italo Calvino. He is the editor of the book Calvino Revisited.

Franco Ricci's profile page