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{en} Giuliana Minghelli. In the shadow of the mammoth: Italo Svevo and the emergence of modernism. Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Abstract

"In this work Giuliana Minghelli examines Svevo's unique contribution to twentieth-century literature within the framework of his parodic Darwinian fables of the prehistoric encounter between the weak and 'unfinished' man and the incommensurable 'other.' In looking at such novels as Confessions of Zeno and As a Man Grows Older, Minghelli shows how Svevo's fiction displaces the heroic strain in modernism, revealing the self-construction of the subject as an ongoing symbiosis with otherness." "Minghelli situates Svevo's work in its cultural context, especially in relation to the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, and Italian contemporaries such as Giacomo Debenedetti. Working at the intersection of poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminist and postcolonial theories, Minghelli provides a close analysis of Svevo's novels and short stories, exploring the construction of self through constant contamination with the world and the other, a process that consciously subverts accepted narratives of evolutionary progress, gender identities, and national and racial belonging."--Jacket

"The writings of Italo Svevo (1861-1928), who was a pioneer of the modernist novel in Italy, are being revived in both Italian and English. Giuliana Minghelli's In the Shadow of the Mammoth uses Svevo's parodic Darwinian fable of the prehistoric encounter between the weak and 'unfinished' man and an incommensurable other to reassess his eccentric contribution to 20th century literature in works like As a Man Grows Older and Confessions of Zeno. Svevo's fiction displaces the heroic strain in Modernism, revealing the self-construction of the subject as an ongoing symbiosis with otherness.

"Minghelli situates Svevo's work in its cultural context, especially in relation to the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, and Italian contemporaries such as Giacomo Debenedetti. Working at the intersection of post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and gender and postcolonial theories, Minghelli performs a series of close readings of Svevo's novels and short stories, exploring the construction of self as a constant contamination with the world and the other, one that consciously subverts accepted narratives of evolutionary progress, gender binarism, or national and racial belonging."--

Contents

1. Between Darwinian origins and modernist ends : Svevo's allegory of symbiosis -- 2. Of artists, women, and Jews : Svevo and the modernist contamination -- 3. Between Darwinism and dreams : the stories of Alfonso and Annetta in Una vita -- 4. The crying of the statues : art and women in Senilita -- 5. Leading the pedagogue by the hand -- 6. Out of the shadow of the mammoth : Zeno and the story of the other.