Campofreda, Olga; (2020) Dalla generazione all'individuo: giovinezza, identità, impegno nell'opera di Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

My research explores the representation of youth in the work of the Italian writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Although the imagery of youth seems to be connected to the autobiographical experience of the so-called Italian Settantasette, a political movement that followed the wave of 1968, it gains a different value if considered in the context of the eighties in Italy and the spread of mass culture. Tondelli’s characters refuse to adhere to the traditional coming of age process and consequently the idea of social integration. In my research I show how the representation of youth as a status in Tondelli's novels should be read as a form of resistance to the concept of the coming of age, as described in Franco Moretti's studies (Moretti, 1987). My aim is to explore the literary solutions found by Tondelli in the attempt of re-interpreting the literary genre of the Bildungsroman. Building upon Tondelli’s unpublished documents in the archives of Centro Documentazione Tondelli in Reggio Emilia, which I analyse for the first time, and looking at Altri libertini (1980), Pao Pao (1982), and Camere separate (1989), I show how Tondelli’s idea of youth changed over time, representing his way to impegno. In the last chapter, I focus on the activity of Tondelli as editor for the three anthologies for the project Under 25, for which he advised young Italian writers; I thus demonstrate how working on literary style and narrative structure became a way for Tondelli’s to engage with culture and oppose the effects of mass culture on literature.

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