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Indeterminacy and the Reader’s Engagement in the Italian Novel: Ungraspable book cover

1st Edition

Indeterminacy and the Reader’s Engagement in the Italian Novel Ungraspable

By Laura Lucia Rossi Copyright 2026
202 Pages
by Routledge

What makes literature ‘literary’? Some theories argue it is a certain degree of ungraspability – openness, vagueness, or ambiguity that invites readers’ active participation in constructing meaning. This book examines five canonical twentieth-century Italian novels (by Tozzi, Landolfi, Vittorini, Gadda, and Ortese) that have consistently been described by critics as particularly “indeterminate”... Read more

1 Introduction. Exploring literary indeterminacy

2 Vertigo. Orchestrated disorientation in Federigo Tozzi’s Con gli occhi chiusi (Eyes Shut, 1919)

3 Anamorphosis. Indeterminacy beyond the fantastic: Tommaso Landolfi’s La pietra lunare (The Moon
Stone, 1939)

4 Echo. The open dialogue of Elio Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversations in Sicily, 1941)

5 Vortex. Indeterminacy by accumulation in Carlo Emilio Gadda’s La cognizione del dolore (The Experience of Pain, 1963)

6 Creature. Indeterminacy and hybridism in Anna Maria Ortese’s L’Iguana (The Iguana, 1965)

Conclusion

Biography

Laura Lucia Rossi is a lecturer in Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Leeds.

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