Landscapes in Between: Environmental Change in Modern Italian Literature and Film

by Monica Seger

Overview

Since its economic boom in the late 1950s, Italy has grappled with the environmental legacy of rapid industrial growth and haphazard urban planning. One notable effect is a preponderance of interstitial landscapes such as abandoned fields, polluted riverbanks, and makeshift urban gardens. Landscapes in Between analyses authors and filmmakers – Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gianni Celati, Simona Vinci, and the duo Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco – who turn to these spaces as productive models for coming to terms with the modified natural environment.

Considering the ways in which sixty years’ worth of Italian literary and cinematic representations engage in the ongoing dialogue between nature and culture, Monica Seger contributes to the transnational expansion of environmental humanities. Her book also introduces an ecocritical framework to Italian studies in English. Rejecting a stark dichotomy between human construction and unspoilt nature, Landscapes in Between will be of interest to all those studying the fraught relationship between humanity and environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442649194
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	01/21/2015
Series:	Toronto Italian Studies
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.28(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Monica Seger is an assistant professor of Italian Studies at The College of William and Mary.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Exploring the Interstice

2. Economic Expansion, Environmental Awareness in the Early Works of Italo Calvino

3. Pier Paolo Pasolini: Boundaries and Mergers in (Ex)Urban Film

4. Observation and Acknowledgment in Gianni Celati’s Verso la foce

5. Simona Vinci’s Provincial Dwellings, Natural Beings

6. Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco: On Horizons and the Human

What People are Saying About This

Elena Past

“Landscapes in Between reads Italian literature and cinema through an ecocritical lens, with special attention to the ‘interstitial spaces’ where urban and less densely populated spaces overlap. Seger does not shy away from difficult, controversial, or contradictory texts, marking this important new work as courageous and complex.”

Letizia Modena

“Meticulously researched and elegantly conceived, Landscapes in Between is the first comprehensive study of nearly sixty years of Italian literary and cinematic attention to environmental concerns written from the perspective of ecocriticism.”

Silvia Ross

“Landscapes in Between is a refreshing, scholarly, thought-provoking, and incisive monograph.”

Editorial Reviews

‘This is an important contribution to the growing internationalization of ecocriticism.’

—Patrick Barron, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature & Environment – online 12 August 2015

‘This book shows a solid theoretical and analytical structure, thus enriching the ever expanding panorama of ecocritical studies concerning the Italian context… Seger’s book becomes a solid brick to add to an edifice that is still in the process of being built.’

—Massimiliano Circulli, Annali d'Italianistica Vol 33:2015

“Landscapes in Between reads Italian literature and cinema through an ecocritical lens, with special attention to the ‘interstitial spaces’ where urban and less densely populated spaces overlap. Seger does not shy away from difficult, controversial, or contradictory texts, marking this important new work as courageous and complex.”—Elena Past, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
“Meticulously researched and elegantly conceived, Landscapes in Between is the first comprehensive study of nearly sixty years of Italian literary and cinematic attention to environmental concerns written from the perspective of ecocriticism.”—Letizia Modena, Department of French and Italian, Vanderbilt University
“Landscapes in Between is a refreshing, scholarly, thought-provoking, and incisive monograph.”—Silvia Ross, Department of Italian, University College Cork

From the Publisher

‘This is an important contribution to the growing internationalization of ecocriticism.’

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature & Environment — online 12 August 2015 - Patrick Barron

‘This book shows a solid theoretical and analytical structure, thus enriching the ever expanding panorama of ecocritical studies concerning the Italian context... Seger’s book becomes a solid brick to add to an edifice that is still in the process of being built.’

Annali d'Italianistica Vol 33:2015 - Massimiliano Circulli