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La speranza violenta: Alberto Moravia e il romanzo di formazione by Valentina Mascaretti

2008; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2008.0147

2222-4319

Luciano Parisi,

Diverse academic and cultural studies

562 Reviews thatof literary images of rural contentment inChapter 4. Hence the significance of Moloney's claim that 'we interpretwhat we read [. . .] in the lightof our experience and knowledge of history,which in turn leads us to take account, in our reading, of thepolitical and cultural experience of thenovelists concerned' (p. I I). So far,toomany scholars have risked giving toomuch weight to a self-referential and 'author-centred' reading of the texts in question, without exploring the terrain they inhabit. Brian Moloney, on the other hand, begins his book with an incisive, strictlyhistorical, discussion of thevexed 'questione meridionale', which, in rejecting the idea of an exclusively top-down, exoticizing gaze of thedominant North over the South, accounts for the complexity of thepower structures shaping the relationships between the two parts of the country (pp. 35-62). In other words, this study can situate itselfcomfortably within an ideal 'subaltern' sphere, since it is the peasants' point of view which emerges over that of the author.Moreover, by focusing on the peasants, the recurrentcritical observation that,because theauthors were not peasants themselves, theycould not understand or represent rural conflict, isno longer valid. Ignazio Silone's Fontamara, forexample, is theexpression of a personal aswell as a political and national crisis. Fontamara isan imaginary village and thestory takesplace in I929, a turning-point fortheFascist regime before the 'return toorder' in the 1930s. Oppression and forms of resistance are those aspects of Fontamara's subject-matter which Moloney disentangles so as to make audible thedialogue of thepeasants, rather than that of the author, with other social classes. The same issue has preoccupied writers from at leastGiovanni Verga onwards, including Pavese in his relationship with thePiedmontese peasantry.Moloney thereforeconsiders Pavese as a historian, thus facilitating a rereading ofLa luna e ifal6which focuses on theportrayal of Italian society in the contradictory aftermath of the Second World War and theResistance. From Pavese toLevi's Cristo si efermato ad Eboli, thenovel of the confino,there isnot much distance to cover. Yet again, a small village is amicrocosm which mirrors the hidden agendas and the social play of thewhole country.Therefore, Levi too is writing about a crisiswhich isnot only personal but national, and which does not buy into the North/South divide. Francesco lovine is the last character in this ruralpiece,with his historical novel Signora Ava and his history of land reclamation inLe terradel Sacra mento. In both cases, once again, it is a sense of failure and rebellion which emerges. In short, ifpolitical revolutions do not seem towork (including that of Fascism), cultural and social stereotypes have tobe challenged and new formsof expression and narratives to recount them need tobe unfolded. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FRANCESCA BILLIANI La speranza violenta: Alberto Moravia e il romanzo di formazione. By VALENTINA MASCARETTI. Bologna: Gedit. 2006. 534 pp. E24. ISBN 978-88-6027-OOI-6. A new stage in thecritical reflectiononMoravia's work was overdue. In theearly I96os Edoardo Sanguineti (Alberto Moravia (Milan: Mursia, I962)) andAlberto Limentani (AlbertoMoravia traesistenza e realta (Venice: Neri Pozza, i962)) suggested two sti mulating interpretations-Moravia as a critic of the Italian bourgeoisie, Moravia as a forerunner of French existentialism-which thewriter eagerly supported. They have been wearily repeated ever since, even thoughMoravia's laterwork and our under standing ofboth social dynamics and twentieth-century thoughtmake itquite difficult to stickwith them. Thanks to this ambitious, original, and captivating monograph, there is a good chance that 2006 will be seen to have marked the beginning of a new stage in Moravia studies. Some ofValentina Mascaretti's ideas are not new, and she acknowledges the scholars whose work has to some extent anticipated her rereading of MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 563 Moravia's books (Rocco Carbone, Dacia Maraini, Thomas Erling Peterson, Giuseppe Rando, Sanguineti himself), but thewidth of her analysis, theoriginality of her the ses, and the strengthof her arguments give this study an unparalleled weight. Future scholars will have todiscuss it: some (including this reviewer)will disagree with Ma scaretti on several points, but itwill be difficult to reject thegist of her conclusions. Moravia's main characters, she says, are not necessarily bourgeois or existential ist figures: rich or poor, educated or not, they are above...