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IN THAT VILLAGE OF OPEN DOORS Le nuove letterature crocevia della cultura moderna Atti del I Convegno Associazione Italiana di Studi sulle Letterature in Inglese Venezia, 1-3 novembre 2001 A cura di Shaul Bassi, Simona Bertacco e Rosanna Bonicelli Cafoscarina In That Village of Open Doors. Le nuove letterature crocevia della cultura moderna. A cura di Shaul Bassi, Simona Bertacco e Rosanna Bonicelli ISBN 88-88613-30-7 AISLI Direttivo e comitato scientifico del convegno Giulio Marra (Presidente) Silvia Albertazzi Paolo Bertinetti Bernard Hickey Elsa Linguanti Luigi Sampietro Paola Splendore Informazioni http://helios.unive.it/~aisli/aisli-ad/ e-mail: [email protected] Questo volume sostituisce in n. 6 della rivista Il Tolomeo, periodico annuale di recensioni. AISLI ringrazia per la collaborazione al convegno e al volume: Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Europei e Postcoloniali – Università Ca’Foscari di Venezia, Wake Forest University – Venezia, Regione Veneto, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, Roberto Guerra, Laura Graziano, Elisa Bortolusso, Andrea De Porti, Beniamino Mammani, Maria Bottaro, Bruno Visalli Stampato con il contributo del Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Europei e Postcoloniali, Università Ca’Foscari di Venezia Foto di copertina: District Six, Cape Town (Sud Africa) Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina Pscrl Calle Foscari, 3259 – 30123 Venezia www.cafoscarina.it Prima edizione maggio 2002 Stampato in Italia presso LCM Selecta Group – Milano INDICI / CONTENTS Foreword . i “In that village of open doors”. Le Nuove Letterature crocevia della cultura moderna Giulio Marra . iii Conferenze plenarie / Plenary Lectures Greco-Roman Classical Aesthetics, Western Christian Humanism and African Modernism Kole Omotoso. 3 “Texts Instead”: la narrazione (postcoloniale) nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica Silvia Albertazzi . 9 Andate e ritorni dall’India (traduttrice per caso) Anna Nadotti . 19 The Impact of Postcolonial Hybridisation on the Britishness of British Literature Itala Vivan . 27 Strategie testuali / Textual Strategies Code-Switching and Other Textual Strategies in the Fiction of Witi Ihimaera Eleonora Chiavetta . 47 Strategies of (Self)Silencing of the Immigrant Subject: a Linguistic Study of Jean Rhys’s “Let Them Call It Jazz” Elisa Lea . 61 The Polysemous Meaning of the Sketches in Roughing It in the Bush Stella Giovannini . 69 Finding Mr Madini: Memory and Story-Telling in Post-Apartheid South Africa Maria Paola Guarducci . 77 Spazi / Spaces Specchi come doni: You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town Manuela Coppola . 87 “A cycle of longing and loss”: Venice by Caterina Edwards Sabrina Francesconi . 95 Enchanted Forests, Darkening Cities. Temporal and Spatial Perspectives in African Migrant Literature Cristina Lombardi Diop. 103 Incontri / Encounters L’Orfeo rilkiano in The Ground Beneath Her Feet di Salman Rushdie Viktoria Tchernichova . 115 Encounters: Dennis Lee meets Harold ‘Sonny’ Ladoo Elsa Linguanti. 127 Verso una poetica della relazione: fisica, matematica e cosmologia nella narrativa di Janette Turner Hospital Ivana Foti. 141 Bodies, Clothes, Habits: the Dilemma of Difference in Emily Carr and Anne Cameron Franca Bernabei. 151 Infanzia / Childhood Children, Dwarfs and Storytellers: “Elfin Figures” in William Trevor’s Fiction Silvia De Rosa. 163 “Not to Forget”: the Japanese American Relocation Camp Experience in Four Books for Children Elisabetta Marino . 171 Open Doors to Multiculturalism: Representations of Ethnicity in Children’s Literature Laura Tosi. 179 Storia e identità / History and Identity Revisiting Africa Through European Eyes: Myth and History in the ‘Postcolonial Village’ Esterino Adami . 195 L’alba d’un nuovo canone? La letteratura scozzese Marco Fazzini . 205 Carved into Black Flesh: storia e schiavitù in due romanzi ambientati a Hispaniola Paola Galli Mastrodonato . 219 Sebastian Barry’s The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty as an Irish narrative of exile Roberta Gefter Wondrich. 229 Crossing Doors: Questions of Identity in A. B. C. Merriman-Labor’s Britons through Negro Spectacles Claudia Gualtieri. 237 Prospettive di genere / Gender Perspectives Writing Female, Writing Black. A Tradition in the Making Marie-Hélène Laforest . 247 Il riso di Shireen Alessandra Masolini . 259 Cibo e soggetto femminile in Fasting, Feasting di Anita Desai Floriana Perna. 269 Female Quest Patterns in Post-Colonial Narratives Deborah Saidero . 277 Il romance impossibile: figlie e padri nei romanzi di J.M. Coetzee Paola Splendore . 287 Focus Canada Problems of Identity: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood Michela Bertilorenzi . 297 Gender e politica in Elizabeth Rex di Timothy Findley Caterina Ricciardi . 305 “Flesh is a Virtue”: Lady Oracle and the Writing of Costume Gothics Michela Vanon Alliata . 313 Poesia e performance / Poetry and Performance “The Oral Tradition of a Nation Given to a New Generation”, that is Black Performance Poetry in London Cristina Abbio . 329 Realtà esteriore e interiore nella poesia di P.K. Page Silvia Del Zotto. 343 Decolonising ‘Ulysses’ in the Neocolonial Irish Society: Conor McPherson’s Plays Monica Randaccio . 351 FOREWORD ISLI (Associazione Italiana di Studi sulle Letterature in Inglese) was created in the year 2000 to coordinate the rich and multiple energies Athat Italian scholars have employed in investigating and divulging the new—and by now not so new—English literatures written in the postcolonial scenario. The neutral and ecumenical definition of English literatures was privileged over more controversial designations such as the obsolete Commonwealth literatures or postcolonial literatures, mainly because, as the plenary speakers show in their contributions, to draw geographical or theoret- ical boundaries today might be just another outdated gesture. This volume brings together the proceedings of the first congress of AISLI, which was held in Venice (1-3 November 2001) under the sign of “openness”, as its title suggests. The board of the association decided not to impose a single theme, but to invite scholars—academics and non academics, young and experienced—to submit papers on any relevant topic. The result has been a rich and diverse array of contributions which, without any preten- sion of exhaustiveness, maps the situation of the research on the new English literatures in Italy. The need of such mapping also suggested that these con- tributions should be published as soon as possible. This accounts for the diverse format of the papers collected in this volume. The editors are happy to acknowledge that there was general agreement on the decision to favour celerity—not to the detriment of accuracy, we hope—over a more complex editorial work of uniformation which would have condemned these proceed- ings to see the light in a not so near future. Although it has become a sort of pious ritual, the scope of our subject ren- ders inevitable to recall that our congress was held less than two months after the watershed events of September 11. During the conference there was no direct debate on them, but indubitably the papers offer many ideas to interpret the international situation in a more complex and articulate way than the polit- ical and journalistic discourse has lately been doing. Beyond the stereotype of the ‘clash of civilizations’ or old-fashioned forms of Thirld-Worldism, what the literatures that we study demonstrates is that geo-political differences cer- tainly exist—let alone inequalities–, but that civilizations are far less mono- lithic than facile slogans imply and that fundamentalist phenomena such as kamikaze terrorists may be the perverse product of cultural contact rather than the visceral expression of any one civilization. Beyond the equally simplify- ing, specular slogans “it’s all their fault” and “it’s all our fault” that have been i volleyed from all sides of the political and cultural spectrum, these literatures can give a precious contribution to understand the responsibility (as opposed to the glorification and to the demonization) of globalisation. Also, they can represent the political and social dilemmas of neglected areas which can be far (Africa) or close (Ireland) to us, but that are frequently ignored by the media. At the same time let us not flatten aesthetics to politics: the texts ana- lyzed here are rich and beatiful texts that testify to the vitality of anglophone literatures. The volume opens with the inaugural speech of the President of AISLI with the four plenary lectures. Then follow the papers presented in the eight workshops. We regret that the wonderful performances which closed the con- ference—the reading and talk by the Indian poet Sujata Bhatt, the scintillat- ing performance of the Canadian playwright Thomson Highway, Armando Pajalich’s inspired reading of Tito Laviera’s poetry,—could not be captured on paper. Likewise, it was impossible to record the intense debates that arose in all sessions, especially the final one devoted to the future perspectives of our discipline. We can just hope that the papers here can provoke further debate, coming to bring new members to the association. Shaul Bassi, Simona Bertacco, Rosanna Bonicelli Venezia, May 2002 ii “In that village of open doors”. Le Nuove Letterature crocevia della cultura moderna Giulio Marra doveroso in primo luogo da parte mia dare una spiegazione dell’im- magine scelta per rappresentare questo Congresso. Il paesaggio che si Èvede non esiste più, ritrae il District Six di Cape Town abbattuto negli anni ’80 durante l’apartheid. Sulle sue