Friday, March 10, 2006

Abstract - Thesis "Romanzo della Resistenza"

Last November 2005 I was awarded a Masters degree (with distinction) in Contemporary Italian Literature with a thesis about Il Romanzo della Resistenza, at the University of Malta. I thus thought of publishing parts of my thesis on the present blog. The following is the ABSTRACT of my thesis:

This thesis deals with the Italian Resistance Novel during post-Second World War period (1945-1968). The thesis follows a detailed analysis of five major Italian novels appertaining to this period. These novels are: Uomini e no (1945) by Elio Vittorini, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947) by Italo Calvino, La casa in collina (1949) by Cesare Pavese, L’Agnese va a morire (1949) by Renata Viganò, and Il partigiano Johnny (1968) by Beppe Fenoglio. This project consists of six chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of the Resistance Literature in Italy and the Resistance Novel in the European Nazi occupied countries. The second chapter explores the concept of time. The third chapter investigates the concept of space and the fourth elaborates such investigation to the themes of the ‘desert’ and the ‘circle’. The fifth chapter deals with sensorial experiences of ‘colour’ and ‘sound’. The sixth and final chapter looks into the dialectical relationship between the human person and the beast. This study also contains an appendix with a set of tables showing the number of occurrences of some of the above themes in the aforementioned novels.

Supervisor: Professor Joseph Eynaud (Department of Italian, University of Malta)

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