Loss and the Other in the Visionary Work of Anna Maria Ortese

This book examines the œvre of Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998) from her first literary writings in the Thirties to her great novels in the Nineties. The analysis focusses on two interweaving core themes loss and the Other. It begins with the shaping of personal loss of an Other following death separation abandonment coupled with melancholy for life's transience as depicted in autobiographical works and in her masterpiece Il porto di Toledo. The bookthen addresses Ortese's literary engagement with social themes in realist stories set in post-war Naples in her collection Il mare non bagna Napoli and then explores her continuing preoccupation with socio-ethical issues imbued with autobiographical elements in non-realist texts including her masterful novelsL'Iguana Il cardillo addolorato and Alonso e i visionariThe book combines theme and genre analysis highlighting Ortese's adoption and hybridization of diverse literary forms such as poetry the novel the short story the essay autobiography realism fairy tales fantasy allegory. In her work Ortese weaves an ongoing dialogue with literary and non-literary works through direct quotations allusions echoes adoption of motifs and topoi. The book thus highlights the intertextual relationship with her sources: Leopardi Dante Petrarch ManzoniCollodi Montale Serao; Shakespeare Milton Keats Blake Joyce Conrad Melville Poe Hawthorne Hardy; Manrique Gongora de Quevedo Villalón Bello Cantar del mio Cid; Heine Valery Puccini's Madam Butterfly folklore popular songs and the Bible. Ortese thus shapes her literary themes inthe background of social political and economic upheavals over six decades of Italian history culminating in an allegorical critique of modernity and a call for a renewed bond between humans and the Other.