SECRET OF THE MUSES RETOLD

John T. Kirby · Purdue University

I. SUMMARY

This book examines five different types of text, each written by a different Italian author of the twentieth century, in order to uncover and analyze the ways in which each has been affected by the literary and artistic heritage of classical antiquity, and the ways in which each has recuperated that heritage in his writing. Authors discussed are Umberto Eco, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Joseph Tusiani, Italo Calvino, and Roberto Calasso, in the genres (respectively) of novel, screenplay, lyric poetry, essay, and critical fiction.

II. RAISON D’ETRE AND APPROACH

The field of Classics is in crisis at the turn of the millennium. Disheartened by the massive difficulty of learning two ancient languages, students question the cost/benefit ratio of the enterprise. Surrounded by postmodernist notions of textuality, and given pause by full-scale assaults on the so-called Western Canon of literature, literary scholars of every ilk must themselves question the continuing ‘relevance’ of the Classics.

What is called for at this point is a demonstration that the study of Classics is not only relevant, but vital – indeed central – to our literary experience, and thus to the human experience generally. This book attempts such a demonstration, by close reading of samples from five different literary genres, showing how each not only harks back to the Greco-Roman tradition, but also how each renews that tradition, infusing it with life for readers of the (post-)modern era. Such questions as ‘What is Myth?’ and ‘What is a Classic?’ are considered.

A particular (and perhaps unique) strategy of this work accounts for its twofold approach: to acknowledge and embrace some of the theoretical models currently popular in literary circles – particulary semiotic, rhetorical, and psychoanalytic criticism – while also remaining committed to the relevance and usefulness of traditional close reading, as well as to the value of the careful philological analysis that has always been the hallmark of good classical studies.

III. TARGET AUDIENCE

Readers interested in one or more of the following: [a] Italian Studies (20th century); [b] Classics (Greek and Latin); [c] Comparative Literature; [d] semiotics, rhetorical theory, or mythology; [e] film theory (chapter 2). The ability to read Italian, Greek, or Latin is not assumed or necessary.

While the text ought to be accessible to the educated non-specialist, the research underpinning this book advances knowledge not only in the field of Italian Studies but also in classical philology. Readers interested in Greek tragedy or mythology, for example, will find a number of provocative new theories proffered here.

IV. CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER ABSTRACT

0. A brief introduction lays out the problem, and the prospects.

1. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Edipo re is in some ways remarkably faithful to Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, but in certain respects the screenplay is profoundly innovative. It draws upon Freudian psychoanalytic theory and Pasolini’s own autobiography for some of the innovations, and the film itself demonstrates a number of Pasolini’s original theories on the semiotics of film. These are oriented to Peircean semiotics.

2. Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, an unparalleled tour de force, ostensibly depends upon the murder-mystery vehicle and the romantic appeal of the Middle Ages for its attractiveness. This chapter demonstrates that the novel is in fact a narrativization of Eco’s (Peircean) semiotic theories, taking its original inspiration from Aristotle’s Poetics via the fiction of Jorge Luís Borges.

3. The poet Joseph Tusiani has published, in addition to his verse in Italian and English, five volumes of Latin verse composed according to the strictest technical specifications of ancient metrics. While these poems are often virtually indistinguishable from classical verse, there are certain aspects in which they betray their twentieth-century origin, and (moreover) the Christian ideology that structures their Weltanschauung. This chapter takes a close look at seven of Tusiani’s poems, dismantling their metrical structure, discussing their imagery, and demonstrating their classical antecedents and current import.

4. While Italo Calvino is perhaps best known for his innovative fiction, his last-composed and posthumously-published work was a book of essays called Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Each of these essays (there are actually only five) contemplates a different ‘literary value,’ as Calvino called them. These are uncannily similar to the rhetorical ‘ideas of style’ treated by the late-antique rhetorician Hermogenes, which may even have served in part as a model for Calvino’s book. A careful collation of the two works is followed by an attempt to conjecture (using relevant material from his fiction) what Calvino would have said in his sixth, never-composed, essay.

5. The scholar/publisher Roberto Calasso astounded the general reading public in 1988 with The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which has since been translated into at least twelve languages. The book, like the work of Milan Kundera and some others, sits uneasily in the category of ‘novel’ (or for that matter in any other); consequently in this chapter a new genre is isolated and named ‘critical fiction.’ The characteristics of this genre are discussed and illustrated. This chapter proceeds to a discussion of several issues raised by Calasso, including the questions ‘What is The Classical?’ and ‘what is Myth?’

6. The Coda summarizes the five chapters, addresses the questions ‘What is a Classic?’ and ‘What about the Canon?’, and proposes a viable disposition toward canonicity and the study of classical literatures.

7. Bibliography (to which the footnotes are keyed by date of publication)

8. Index