Tradition and Experimentation in Twentieth-Century European Fiction
Directed Reading Questions for Session 8: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979)
- Theoretical Prism: Umberto Eco, ‘The Poetics of the Open Work’, The Role of the Reader (1979) [Opera aperta (1962)]
How does Eco define a work of art?
How does the measure of ‘openness’ of medieval texts differ from their twentieth-century equivalents?
What is the function of the consumer (audience, reader, etc.) in approaching an open work of art?
[ What relationship might exist between current scientific theories and the measure of openness and closure in works of art in any given historical period? ]
- Textual Analysis: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, 1979
Consider the structure of the text – how does the frametale relate to the incipits?; how do the incipits relate to each other? What role does genre play in the novel? And how do these issues relate to Eco’s considerations on the open work?
Consider the text’s treatment of readers and readings. Who are the various readers? How do they read? Where do they read? Are different ways of reading privileged in different environments or institutions? Are all ways of reading equally valued in the text?
How would you characterise the relationship between readers and writers in the text? (Consider the characterization of Silas Flannery and Ermes Marana in answering this question).
How does gender impact on the ‘pleasure of the text’ and the ‘erotics of reading’ (both Roland Barthes) implied in the text?
How traditional is this apparently experimental text?
