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Download Thesis This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ A new systemic and socio-political interpretation of region and family in I promessi sposi, The Return of the Native and La Terre functional and dysfunctional patterns in the journey towards autonomy Barletta, Olimpia Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 A New Systemic and Socio-Political Interpretation of Region and Family in I promessi sposi, The Return of the Native and La Terre: Functional and Dysfunctional Patterns in the Journey towards Autonomy by OLIMPIA BARLETTA A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature King’s College London Department of Comparative Literature September 2019 2 Abstract Up to now, most scholarly work on nineteenth-century regionalist literature has characterised it as sentimental, exoticising, and focalised on the detailed description of customs and traditions of a specifically delimited geographical area. This is defined as often crystallised, fixed in time, static and cut-off from the wider world. This thesis sets out to reassess the concept of region as a literary geography through an innovative transnational, comparative perspective that adopts a three-fold approach: first, studying the relationships and forms of communication and miscommunication that develop among individuals who inhabit the region; second, analysing the power dynamics and social hierarchies that result from them; and finally, examining how individual choices and behaviour impact the wider social sphere and ‘produce’ regional space. I have chosen to concentrate on regional space as depicted in Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Emile Zola’s La Terre through the lenses of systemic theory developed by Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and later re-elaborated in the psychological field by Argentinian psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin. My aim is to show how the region is constructed as involved in a functional or dysfunctional relationship towards characters, similarly to how a family operates towards its members, allowing or hindering their movements and their attempts to achieve autonomy. Chapter One redefines the concept of region and introduces the Minunchian family structures. I then discuss the historical background of the three national contexts (Italy, Britain and France) in which the chosen authors write. Chapter Two examines in more detail the metaphorical correspondence between region and family in Lombardy, Egdon Heath and La Beauce, using Minuchin’s theories, in a constant zooming of photographic lenses from a microcosmic level, that is the family stricto sensu as represented in the novels, to a macrocosmic one, that is the regional territory in which these families live and interact. Furthermore, I demonstrate that mobility within and beyond the region determines whether a familial and regional system can be seen as functional 3 or dysfunctional. Here, the journey becomes the key narrative trope writers use to trace their characters’ path towards either integration or escape from the enclosed regional boundaries. Chapter Three takes a different perspective and looks at the political, socio-economic and religious aspects of regional life and history in the specific national context of each novel. Here, I contest traditional visions in both literary and cultural discourse of the region as a static entity in time and space. In conclusion, I outline the results obtained, which show how nineteenth-century regionalism is much more than condescending stereotypes, nostalgic sentimentalism and local colour. As exemplified by Manzoni, Hardy and Zola, an interest in regional spaces permeates even the dominant form of the realist novel and manifests itself in their three novels as a complex engagement with the region not as an immobile landscape but as an entity endowed with entropic energy in constant transformation. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Chapter One – Nations, Regions and Families 6 Research Purpose 26 Regional Odysseys 30 Historical Background and Development of Regionalism 35 Italy 47 Britain 54 France Chapter Two – Minunchian Families and the Journey in the Regional Space 67 A Regressive Regional Journey in La Terre 99 Rebellious Wanderings in The Return of the Native 118 A Regional Odyssey in I promessi sposi Chapter Three – Regional Space and Family Systems: Political, Economical, and Social Implications 157 La Beauce and the Shadow of Capitalism 181 Egdon Heath and the Return to a Primitive Society 210 Lombardy between Political Isolation and the National Project 248 Conclusions 258 Bibliography 5 Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Rosa Mucignat for her continuous support, guidance and faith in my project over the past four years. I would also like to thank Doctors Ziad Elmarsafy, Justine McConnell and Sebastian Matzner at King’s College London for their help and advice through my upgrade process, and for the inspiration they have provided for me in their Comparative Literature Research Seminars. My thanks go also to my viva examiners Doctors Hannah Thompson and Luciano Parisi, whose help was crucial in improving this dissertation. I would also like to thank King’s College for having welcomed me since my MA programme and for having given me the opportunity to teach in Academia for a number of modules during my time as a PhD candidate. What I learned from such a formative experience has been invaluable. I am grateful to Professor Franco Moretti, whose work on space and the provincial was key in shaping my thesis’ argument. I was lucky enough to meet with Professor Moretti during one of his visiting at King’s in the summer of 2017. The enthusiastic response he gave to my PhD ideas and future projects gave me a truly boost of confidence, which I will never forget. I am also forever thankful to my professors from my BA degree at Keele University, especially Professor David Amigoni for transmitting me his passion for Victorian Literature, and Professor Oliver Harris whose active and engaging lessons enormously influenced and improved my way of teaching. I want to thank all my friends, close and far, for having accompanied me through this pivotal period of my life. Infinite thanks go, undoubtedly, to my parents for their profound investment in my studies and for their unconditional love. I dedicate this thesis to you. 6 Chapter One: Nations, Regions, and Families Research Purpose My thesis focuses on the analysis of three nineteenth-century European novels through the lens of regionalism. The novels in question are Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1825-27; 1840- 42), Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878), and Emile Zola’s La Terre (1887).1 This dissertation sets out to question the conventional understanding of region as a static, empty landscape cut-off from the world. I shall compare the regional space in Manzoni, Hardy and Zola to a family verifying whether it behaves in a functional or dysfunctional way, allowing or hindering its components’ psychological growth and autonomy. The journey, both as physical mobility outwards and as psychodynamic separation from the original family will represent the key of this analysis. In addition, I will verify whether the connection between characters and territory is applicable also to the dyad nation and region through the socio-economical, political and religious background the authors present. My methodology in this thesis is grounded in the psychodynamic, more specifically in the systemic theories produced by Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and by their later psychological re-elaboration by Argentinian psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin. This framework allows me to analyse the novels’ characters not only as individuals, but also as part of systems. My choice of texts, as we shall see later in this chapter, aims at reimagining the regionalist canon by 1 Alessandro Manzoni, I promessi sposi (Milan: Mondadori, 1990). Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, trans. by Bruce Penman (London: Penguin, 1972). Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Emile Zola, La Terre (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1974). Emile Zola, Earth, trans. by Brian Nelson and Julie Rose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 7 comparing three authors which are not traditionally considered as regionalist, with the exception of Hardy. Although it is generally considered the first great ‘Italian novel’, Manzoni’s I promessi sposi plays out entirely in the regional space of Lombardy, with a final foray into the Venetian Republic. As we shall discuss in due course, Manzoni’s contribution to the linguistic and cultural idea of Italy is coded in regionalist terms, and is sensitive to his characters’ profound sense of displacement as they are forced to leave their native village and integrate in a new socio-political space.
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