Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Culture and Literature: The Denatured Wild

(Hardback)

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The essays in this volume provide a theorization of what we might call the denatured wild, in other words a notion of environmental restoration or "reinhabitation" that recognizes and reconfigures the human factor as an interdependent entity. Acknowledging the contributions of Marco Armerio, Serenella Iovino, Giovanna Ricoveri, Patrick Barron and Anna Re among others, Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Culture and Literature: The Denatured Wild negotiates the ground within the historicizing, theoretical perspectives, and surveying spirit of these writers. Despite the central role that nature has played in Italian culture and literature, there has been an evident lack of critical approaches free of the bridles of the socio-political manipulations of nationalism. The authors in this collection, by recognizing the groundbreaking work of many non-Italian ecocritics, challenge the narrowly defined conventions of Italian Studies and illuminates the complexities of an Italian ecocriticism that reveals a rich environmentally engaged literary and cultural tradition.

Reviews

This collection of eight essays is a welcome and important addition to the growing body of ecocritical scholarship on Italian land and literature. -- Patrick Barron, University of Massachusetts, Boston
From TV series to Italo Calvino, from children literature to toxic contamination Pasquale Verdicchio has gathered an astonishing collection of essays which contributes magisterially to both Italian ecocriticism and the discipline at large. Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Culture and Literature: The Denatured Wild is the essentialcompanion to any exploration into the Italian material and intellectual landscape. -- Marco Armiero, Royal Institute of Technology
If ecocriticism is the attempt to shape new vocabularies for an age of environmental crises, this collection, masterfully conceived and edited by Pasquale Verdicchio, invites us to think Italy as a mobile reality beyond ecological clichs, whether of Great Beauty or irredeemable decadence. Encompassing a rich array of subjects, genres, and voices, Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Literature and Culture: The Denatured Wild tells us of a country that, in spite of its cultural ambivalences and political contradictions, teems with ecological creativity and visions of future. If there is a book with which anyone studying Italian ecocriticism should start, this is the one. -- Serenella Iovino, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Turin, Italy

Author Bio

Pasquale Verdicchio is director of the Italian Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego.