Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante (review)

In his revisionist psychoanalytic literary theory, Harold Bloom points out how every new generation of writers struggles with an "anxiety of influence"—an "oedipal stage" during which the legacies of earlier poets loom large. For Bloom, originality is achieved when writers who have internalized the works of others break free from direct influence by superimposing their own vision and voice upon such works, thus escaping the menacing power of their predecessors.

Elsa Morante's subversive yet traditional approach combines imagination with historical, ethical and psychoanalytical genres, enabling her to achieve an equilibrium between old and new narrative aesthetics and secure a place in the Western literary canon. Morante's multifaceted style is part of a literary continuum, one she shares with both her predecessors and successors.

It is from this premise that the volume Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante edited by Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood, develops. In this insightful collection of twelve scholarly essays, the editors offer contemporary theoretical, critical and biographical studies which combine philological analysis with cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches and confirm the authoritative status of Morante's oeuvre. In so doing, Lucamante and Wood provide the first inclusive critical presentation of Morante's works in English.

In their introduction, the editors explore the historical and theoretical foundation of Morante's work, pointing out how her hard-to-categorize narrative style, as well her refusal to adopt an ideological stance, kept her outside the politically charged literary circles of the time.

The first essays investigate Morante's early career as well as her direct and indirect contact with the English-speaking world, both as a translator of Katherine Mansfield's Collected Stories and as a poorly translated Italian author.

Morante's dexterous manipulation of genres and the self-conscious, ironic citationism at the basis of her narrative are the topics of the essays by Sharon Wood and Cristina Della Colletta.

In particular, Wood's analysis of Menzogna e sortilegio, drawing from the theoretical postmodern tenets of Michel Foucault and Frederick Jameson, demonstrates how Morante's novel anticipates postmodernism. Woods shows how the elimination of spatial and temporal barriers and the blend and transformation of different genres (feuilleton, epistolary, realistic and fantastic) enabled Morante to break the rules of traditional narrative and become a pioneer.

Morante's interest in hybridization goes beyond narrative genres, as shown by Hanna Sekowska's study of Morante's conception of ragazzo materno. Sekowska's analysis of the myth of androgyny in Morante's Aracoeli emphasizes how, for Morante, androgyny represents a stage of spiritual fullness achieved by the unification of the sexes. Manuele, the protagonist in Aracoeli, searches for his mother's body, which represents a desire to return to his origin—a prenatal state in which there is no distinction between parent and child.

It is Morante's legacy which is explored by Concetta D'Angeli and Stefania Lucamante. D'Angeli's investigation concentrates on psychological traits and the large-scale narrative structure that inspires contemporary writers. Morante's most important thematic heirs are Maria Teresa Di Lascia, Fabrizia Ramondino and Elena Ferrante, according to D'Angeli. In their works, favorite Morantian topics—such as family relations in an oppressive South populated by charismatic women, tyrannical and sensual men and the difficult passage from childhood to adulthood—are likewise considered.

In a rigorous theoretical analysis of Fabrizia Ramondino's Althenopolis and Guerra d'infanzia e di Spagna as well as Morante's Menzogna e sortilegio and La storia, Stefania Lucamante compares the two authors' ideas about World War II. Lucamante interprets Ramondino's works by applying Morante's vision of the war as "unnecessary tragic theatre," with women at center stage. Lucamante highlights the striking similarities between Morante's and Ramondino's "pessimistic opinion of History" and notes how Ramondino borrows from Morante's loathing for a nationalistic fanaticism that leads to war, a loathing that's fueled by Morante's need to...