Carlo Emilio Gadda (Toronto Italian Studies)

Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) is considered by many to be Italy's most outstanding modern writer. Author of essays, novels, and short stories, Gadda has been awarded many literary prizes, particularly for his style, which has been compared to that of Joyce, Proust, and Musil. Because, however, his dense and complex linguistics tend to defy adequate translation, his work is not widely known outside of Italy. This collection of essays introduces Gadda's work at last to the English-speaking world. Written by leading Gadda scholars, the essays capture the complexities that characterize Gadda's narrative. His plurilingualism, pastiches, and narrative entanglements are revealed both as a revolt against conventional literary style and as the expression of a chaotic, painful, and labyrinthine world inhabited by a fragmented subject. Gadda emerges as a transgressive novelist, a humorist, and a mannerist who continuously deforms language through parodic and comic modes.