The Author in Criticism

The Author in Criticism explores the cultural and historic patterns and differences in the critical readings of Italian author Italo Calvino’s works in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Italy. It considers the external factors that contribute to diversify readings of Calvino’s texts in different contexts. The volume therefore covers, most notably, matters of genre (science fiction, postmodernism), cultural perceptions and conventions, the (re)current image of the author in different media, academic schools, -curricula and -canons, biographical information (such as gender and place of birth), translation and the language in which the author speaks (or fails to speak) to us. It traces the influence of these aspects in the academic discourse on Calvino. The book analyses as well Calvino’s various professional roles as writer, editor, essayist, journalist, private correspondent and public, cosmopolitan intellectual, reappraising their often little acknowledged importance for academic criticism. An important underlying idea is that the preconceived image that every critic has of Calvino before even opening one of his books is often solidified and repeated even in the most refined and complex critical analyses. The volume purposefully predilects the textual and non-textual parts that are usually considered peripheral to the works of an author, such as book covers, blurbs, reviews, talks, interviews etc. In this way, the book provides insight into the reception of Calvino’s works in different countries. Moreover, it forms a broader reflection of and on important constants in the workings of literary criticism, and on the way academic discourses have developed in various cultural contexts over the last decades.