| dc.description.abstract | Marina Fiorato’s The Glassblower of Murano (2008) tells the
story of Eleonora, a young woman who travels to Venice in search of her
genealogical past and existential roots. Coming from London, Eleonora
incarnates a “modern” outlook on what she assumes to be the timeless life
and culture of Venice. At one point in the novel, admiring the old houses
on the Canal Grande, Eleonora is “on fire with enthusiasm for this culture
where the houses and the people kept their genetic essence so pure for
millennia that they look the same now as in the Renaissance” (2008, 15).
This discourse of pure origins and unbroken continuities is a fascinating
fantasizing on characteristics that extend from the urban territory to the
people who inhabit it. Within narratives centred on this notion, Italian
culture, perceived as holding a privileged relation with history and the past,
is often contrasted with the displacement and rootlessness that seem to
characterize the modern places and people of England and North America.
Through a discussion of two Anglo-American popular novels set in Italy,
and several relocation narratives, this paper proposes an exploration of
the notion according to which history is the force cementing the identities
of societies perceived as less modern and frozen in a timeless dimension.
From a point in time when the dialectics of history have been allegedly
transcended, Anglo-American popular narratives observe Italy as a timeless,
pre-modern other. | en_US |
