Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation

Naples and the porous landscapes of ecomafia and volcanic eruptions; death in Venice as a literary trope and a petrochemical curse; earthquakes and political moves that shake territories, people, and ideas cross-country; the slow pace of wine, food and environmental violence in Piedmont: these are some of the texts that this book narrates and analyses. Here stories of justice, cultural visions, society and politics interlace with stories of land and life, ecosystems and body cells, pollution and redemption. Written by one of Europe’s leading critics, Ecocriticism and Italy reads Italy as a text – a compound text made of matter and imagination – always keeping in mind the link between the horizon of this country and the world’s larger ecology of ideas and matter. Challenging stereotypes and ambivalent clichés, this book uses ecocriticism as a way to give voice to the forces, wounds, and messages of creativity dispersed on Italy’s body, arguing that a literature, an art, and a criticism that are able to transform these unexpressed voices into stories – into our stories – are not only ways to resist. They are a practice of liberation.