Pasolini after Dante The ‘Divine Mimesis’ and the Politics of Representation legenDa leenda, founded in 1995 by the european Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contem­ porary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on arabic, Catalan, english, French, german, greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. an editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies, the British Comparative literature association and the association of Hispanists of great Britain & Ireland. 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Today Routledge is one of the world’s leading academic publishers in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It publishes thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide. www.routledge.com ITalIan PeRSPeCTIveS Editorial Committee Professor Simon gilson, University of Warwick (general editor) Dr Francesca Billiani, University of Manchester Professor Manuele gragnolati, Université Paris­Sorbonne Dr Catherine Keen, University College london Professor Martin Mclaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford Founding Editors Professor Zygmunt Baran´ski and Professor anna laura lepschy In the light of growing academic interest in Italy and the reorganization of many university courses in Italian along interdisciplinary lines, this book series, founded by Maney Publishing under the imprint of the northern Universities Press and now continuing under the legenda imprint, aims to bring together different scholarly perspectives on Italy and its culture. Italian Perspectives publishes books and collections of essays on any period of Italian literature, language, history, culture, politics, art, and media, as well as studies which take an interdisciplinary approach and are methodologically innovative. appearin in this series 20. Ugo Foscolo and English Culture, by Sandra Parmegiani 21. The Printed Media in Fin-de-siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers, ed. by ann Hallamore Caesar, gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns 22. Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda, by Deborah amberson 23. Remembering Aldo Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder, ed. by Ruth glynn and giancarlo lombardi 24. Disrupted Narratives: Illness, Silence and Identity in Svevo, Pressburger and Morandini, by emma Bond 25. Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment, by george Corbett 26. Edoardo Sanguineti: Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde, ed. by Paolo Chirumbolo and John Picchione 27. The Tradition of the Actor-Author in Italian Theatre, ed. by Donatella Fischer 28. Leopardi’s Nymphs: Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny, by Fabio a. Camilletti 29. Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture, by Katrin Wehling­giorgi 30. Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture’s Appropriation of a Baroque Genius, by laura Rorato 31. The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. by Jane e. everson, Denis v. Reidy and lisa Sampson 32. Rome Eternal: The City As Fatherland, by guy lanoue 33. The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature, by Simone Brioni 34. Laughter from Realism to Modernism: Misfits and Humorists in Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda, by alberto godioli 35. Pasolini after Dante: The ‘Divine Mimesis’ and the Politics of Representation, by emanuela Patti Managing Editor Dr graham nelson, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK www.legendabooks.com Pasolini after Dante The ‘Divine Mimesis’ and the Politics of Representation ❖ emanuela Patti Italian Perspectives 35 Modern Humanities Research association and Routledge 2016 Published by the Modern Humanities Research Association Salisbury House, Station Road, Cambridge cb1 2la and Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ox14 4rn and 711 Third Avenue, New York, ny 10017 LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business ISBN 978-1-909662-93-3 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-315-55973-5 (ebk) First published 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system, or otherwise used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner. Disclaimer: Statements of fact and opinion contained in this book are those of the author and not of the editors, Routledge, or the Modern Humanities Research Association. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, in respect of the accuracy of the material in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested © Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge 2016 Printed in Great Britain Cover: 875 Design Copy-Editor: Dr Anna J. Davies Contents ❖ Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations x Introduction: Pasolini after Dante 1 1 Setting the Scene: Debates and Contexts 15 2 Dante, Poeta Della Realtà 32 3 Representing the Reality of the ‘Other’: Objectivity and Plurilingualism from Poesia dialettale del Novecento to Ragazzi di vita 54 4 Officina and ‘la grande Ideologia del Reale’: Dante, Contini, gramsci, and auerbach for a Theory of experimental literature 75 5 auerbach’s Figural Realism in Pasolini’s ‘national­popular’ Cinema and Beyond 104 6 La Divina Mimesis, or the Death of Dantean Realism 129 Conclusion 155 Bibliography 162 Index 174 To the Others ACKnoWLeDGeMents ❖ During the long compositional history of this book, several people have helped me and supported me, and I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to them. I am endlessly grateful to Manuele gragnolati, for the intertextual and live conversations we have had on Dante and Pasolini. His guidance, encouragement and intuitive intelligence have deeply inspired me during the preparation of this book. I would like to thank my supervisor Michael Caesar, the Department of Italian Studies, and the aHRC for supporting me during my PhD at Birmingham. The ideas of this book were also inspired by numerous collaborations across disciplines over the past five years. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleague at Birmingham, Clodagh Brook, for the exciting interdisciplinary work we have carried out together over the last few years. a warm thank for her untiring support and exemplary academic commitment. I would also like to thank Pierpaolo antonello, for the conversations on intellectuals, the media and representation in Cambridge, london and Bologna; Davide Messina, for his brilliant advice on the title; Florian Mussgnug, for his valuable comments on portions of Chapter 3 and 4; giuliana Pieri and James Williams, for organising a stimulating london symposium on Pasolini across disciplines in October 2014 that has enriched Chapter 5 of this book; and a very special thank you is reserved for Colin Blakemore, for the stimulating dialogues we have had on empathy and the arts. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Institute of Modern languages Research at the School of advanced Study, University of london, for the wonderful professional opportunity I was given. The time spent at Senate House library during my appointment has been one of the most productive and pleasant experiences of my career. I am also very grateful to the Media School at Bournemouth University for the valuable teaching experience I gained on representation. Two anonymous readers for legenda provided helpful comments and criticism. I would like to thank Cristina viti for her kind, patient and professional linguistic support with the translations of this book; Simon gilson, series editor of Italian Perspectives at legenda, and graham nelson, managing editor of legenda, for their great help in the editorial preparation of the manuscript; Dan Harding and Kate Willman for their proofreading; Claire Wallis and Paul Tyrrell for their linguistic support at the early stages of this editorial project. affectionate thanks go to Daniel and Isobel Pick for their generous hospitality and friendship during the final stages of writing this book; angela Quaquero for her guidance through the symbolic; my family and friends in Italy, and especially my sister Francesca, for her vital support and financial assistance. last but not least, I am very grateful to laura and giulio lepschy for a memorable conversation on the emotional and symbolic value of this book. all the translations in this book are by Cristina viti. e.p., london, august 2015