The Italian Cultural Institute and the Department of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics of Concordia University are pleased to present the conference “Fascism and Psychoanalysis in Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Eros e Priapo” by Paola Italia. Dario Brancato, professor Concordia University, and Francesco D’Arelli, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, present the speaker and the themes of the conference.
Wednesday May 1° 2019, 6pm
Italian Cultural Institute
1200, Av. du Dr. Penfield
Montréal (QC), QC H3A 1A9
Conference in Italian
In 1944-46, Milanese author Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) wrote Eros e Priapo, a famous anti-fascist pamphlet which, on account of its “scandalous obscenity”, was rejected by several editors and publishers, and only published in 1967 after the author consented to revise it substantially. Through a new reading of the text that takes into account the recently discovered original version of the text, Paola Italia shows how Gadda undertakes a formidable and bold operation: that of opposing Fascism and Mussolini’s dictatorship with the weapons of Freudian psychoanalysis, and providing a parody of Mussolini as an imperial Priapus.
Paola Italia has studied in Pavia, Ginevra, Pisa and since 2005 she has been Associate Professor of Italian Literature. She has been teaching at the University of Siena, Roma “La Sapienza”, Bologna. She has studied Modern Literature, from ‘700 to ‘900, with a specific interest in ecdotic problems and Authorial Philology (www.filologiadautore.it). She took part in two philological teams devoted to the critical edition of Promessi Sposi’s first draft (Fermo e Lucia, edited by Dante Isella, published in 2006), and Canti’critical edition, directed by Franco Gavazzeni, published in 2006 and 2009 by Accademia della Crusca). She carried out a research on 20th century Italian Literature language and philology, focused on different authors such as Gadda (Glossario di Carlo Emilio Gadda ‘milanese’, Edizioni dell’Orso, 1998 [Premio “Marino Moretti” per la Critica e la Filologia nel 1999]), Manganelli, Savinio (Il pellegrino appassionato, Sellerio 2004; Premio “Domenico Rea” 2005), Bassani, Tobino. With Giorgio Pinotti and Claudio Vela she is now the editor of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s work in Adelphi, and with Giorgio Pinotti has edited Eros e Priapo’s new critical edition based on the first draft (Milano, 2016).
Reservation no longer available