From Thomas Mann to Porto Marghera: Material Ecocriticism, Literary Interpretation, and Death in Venice.

“Material ecocriticism” is a methodological approach which, assuming the active expressiveness of matter, extends the category of text to all material formations, taking bodies and landscapes as the bearers of “material narratives”. Investigating the trope of “death in Venice,” my chapter proposes a comparative reading of Mann’s famous novella, Andrea Zanzotto’s lyrical cycle Fu Marghera, and Marco Paolini’s theatrical play Parlamento Chimico/Storie di plastica. Its main point, however, will be an examination of this theme in the city’s own textuality and active materiality. Applying the categories of material ecocriticism, in fact, I concentrate on Venice as a text made out of embodied stories—a material text, in which natural dynamics, cultural practices, political visions, and industrial choices are interlaced with human bodies in issues of justice, health, and ecology.