Meschini, Michela; (2004) Image and insight: Tabucchi and the visual arts. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Within the domain of the parallel studies of literature and the visual arts, the fiction of Antonio Tabucchi decidedly represents a crucial area of investigation. References and allusions to painters and paintings, cinematic quotations and photographic passages constitute an integral part of the author's writing, giving shape to a narrative world that is deeply affected and permeated by the visual. By focusing on relevant works, this thesis analyses the role of the visual arts in the fiction of Tabucchi. It examines the ways in which painting, photography and cinema inspire the imagery of the author, informing the themes and structures of his novels and short stories. In the process of doing so, it also investigates the issue of visuality, showing how the relation between text and image constitutes a central impulse to Tabucchi's literary project. For the author, literature and visual art are not mutually exclusive, but shed light on one another. They are neither rivals nor sisters, but are linked by a relation of complicity, through which word and image, the verbal and the visual combine to make sense in a play of dialectical tension. Given the interdisciplinary scope, this study draws both on literary criticism and art theory. Its principal objective is to develop a thematic profile of Tabucchi's work, offering critical insight into one of the most prominent contemporary Italian writers, one whose fiction has not yet been the object of a comprehensive study. From the privileged perspective of the visual, it proposes a thorough interpretation of Tabucchi's poetics, as originating from the interplay between text and image, while also attempting to position his work within the contemporary debate on postmodernism.

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