Ascetic Images : Anna Maria Ortese and Roberto Rossellini in the Underworld (Suny series, Literature...in Theory)

Castaldo, Achille

State University of New York Press（2026/01発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 302 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9798855805000
• DDC分類 791.430233092

Full Description

Examines the narrative articulation of social invisibility in works by two of the most influential Italian cultural producers of the twentieth century.

The product of centuries of systemic violence and active marginalization, the lumpenproletariat haunts modernity and its afterlives, from the dark corners of the industrial metropolis to present-day slums. Ascetic Images explores the Neapolitan version of this enigmatic social group as it enters the works of writer Anna Maria Ortese and filmmaker Roberto Rossellini in the post-World War II era. An exercise in critical narratology of film and literature, the book reconstructs the "ascetic images" inscribed in their texts—the traces of the traumatic experience of the urban underclass, obscured by dominant discourses. Looking especially at Ortese's "The Silence of Reason" (1953) and Rossellini's Journey to Italy (1954), Achille Castaldo proposes a method of close reading that reveals the narrative articulation of social invisibility and gestures toward the political crises of the present as marginalized groups are increasingly pushed beyond the limits of our fragile social awareness.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Condemned to See

1. Of Hunger Artists and Ascetic Images

2. Hidden Things

3. Voyaging in an Unknown Land

4. Dead and Restless: "The Silence of Reason"

5. The City and Its Depths: Journey to Italy

Epilogue: Ars Moriendi

Notes
References
Index