1st Edition
Industrial Literature and Authors Labor, Factory Utopias and Testimonial Intent
In recent years, the field of literary studies at the international level has become more and more involved in the analysis of the so-called industrial literature, a literary genre that focuses on the literary representation of factory work and workers’ alienation. This book engages in the ongoing debate by offering a narratological analysis of Italian industrial novels in particular, while taking into consideration their paratexts and interrogating the possibility of the presence of a testimonial intent in the text. The study reconstructs the connections between visions of factory utopias and Italian industrial literature, starting with an overview on said visions of utopia and how they came into being in Europe following the industrial revolution. It then proceeds by exploring the relationship between the twentieth-century Italian entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti and Italian industrial authors, and the influence that Olivetti’s visions of factory utopia had on these writers and how they perceived themselves as witnesses of factory life and workers’ alienation. In analyzing these texts, and particularly the novels by Paolo Volponi and Ottiero Ottieri, the book focuses on the previously overlooked representation of the self in industrial literature and on how this self expresses the need for testimony.
ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
Utopia and Labor: Modernity, Industrialization, and Alienation
1.1. Links between Utopia and Labor: Modernity and the Democratization of Utopia
1.2. Utopian Socialism: The Industrial Revolution and the Evolution of Utopia
1.3 Marxism, Utopia, and Alienation
Chapter 2
Adriano Olivetti: Visions of Utopia and Labor
2.1. Adriano Olivetti: the Entrepreneur and the Quest for the Future
2.2. The Establishment and Evolution of Olivetti’s Utopia: The Foundation of the Movimento di Comunità
Chapter 3
Utopia and Literature: Industrial Literary Production in Italy
3.1. The Industrial Novel and Marxist Literary Theory
3.2. Italian Fiction and its Relationship with Labor
3.3 Una visita in fabbrica: Italian Industrial Literature between Neorealism and Experimental Writing
3.4 Italian Industrial Literature: A Problematic Codification
Chapter 4
Testimonial Realism: Industrial Literature and Testimonial Intent
4.1. Italian Industrial Literature as a Form of Realism
4.2. The Rise of Testimonial Realism: The Olivettian Authors as Witnesses to Factory Life
4.3 Industrial Authors: Differences and Similarities
4.4 The Factory as a Utopian Place
Chapter 5
The (Un)Happy Factory: Ottieri’s Donnarumma all’assalto
5.1. Ottiero Ottieri, the Author and the Narrator
5.2. Utopia and its Limits
5.3 Female Representation in Ottieri’s Donnarumma all’assalto
5.4 The Carnival: The Factory as Utopian Place
5.5 ‘La disoccupazione sempre divide’: The Limits of Utopia
Chapter 6
Paolo Volponi from Utopia to Dystopia: Memoriale and Le mosche del capitale
6.1. Paolo Volponi from Utopia to Testimonial Intent
6.2. The Multifaceted Factory: Memoriale
6.3 Le mosche del capitale and Testimonial Intent
6.4 Le mosche del capitale and the Failure of Utopia
CONCLUSION
Biography
Bianca Rita Cataldi is a Research Lead at the UCD Humanities Institute at University College Dublin. She has recently been awarded the Alberto Institute Visiting Fellowship at Seton Hall University (New Jersey).
