Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film

Introduction.- PART I: WRITING IDENTITIES IN THE PRE-POSTHUMAN AND POSTHUMAN ERAS.- Giacomo Leopardi's book of the future: the Zibaldone as an encyclopaedia for the Post-Human; Gianna Conrad.- Animals, trees, and stones: The posthumanist gaze in Italian modernist fiction; Alberto Godioli, Bart van den Bossche, & Carmen van den Bergh.- Svevo's "Argo e il suo padrone": animalized human or humanized animal?; Alessio Aletta.- Identity and Anonymity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels; Enrica Maria Ferrara.- Visions of the Future in Laura Pugno's novels "Sirene" and "La caccia"; Marco Amici.- PART II: TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY.- Contemporary Poetry in Italy:  A World model in the Age of Digital Reproduction; Giancarlo Alfano.- Cell phones and the Fragmented Subject in Italian Fiction; Kristina Varade.- Mechanized Women and Sentient Machines: Language, Gendered Technology and the Female Body in Luciano Bianciardi and Tiziano Scarpal; Eleonora Lima.- (Technologically) Fallen from Grace: Abjection and Android Motherhood in Viola Di Grado's Novel Bambini di ferro (2016); Serena Todesco and Annalisa Somma.- PART III: BOUNDARIES OF THE HUMAN.- The Anxiety of Proximity: Cognition, Ethics and Subjectivity at the Limits of the Human in Le cose fondamentali by Tiziano Scarpa and La vita oscena by Aldo Nove; Eugenio Bolongaro.- 'Il desiderio / di zombi proletari': the Undead and Social Conflict in the 1980s; Fabio Camilletti.- "Able to put the reader in a new relationship with reality": Posthuman impegno and/in Italian science fiction"; Giulia Iannuzzi.- New Materialism, Female Bodies and Ethics in Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte and L'eclisse; Paolo Saporito.- "Lose Your Self: Gianni Celati and the Art of Being One with the World"; Enrico Vettore.

Enrica Maria Ferrara is Assistant Professor of Italian at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of Calvino e il teatro (2011), Il realismo teatrale nella narrativa del Novecento: Vittorini, Pasolini, Calvino (2014), and co-editor of Staged Narratives / Narrative Stages: Essays in Italian Prose Narrative and Theatre (2017).

"Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity brings together a number of essays illustrating the significant role Italian literature, film and philosophy have played in the development of posthumanism. ... Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film will interest a range of scholars ... . These original and fascinating readings also serve as a useful guide for instructors looking to infuse their college coursework with new texts and critical perspectives ... ." (Viktor Berberi, Annali d'italianistica, Vol. 40, 2022)