This paper analyses “Occasion for Loving” (1963), Nadine Gordimer’s third novel, from a point of view which, though deserving consideration, does not seem to have been properly developed as yet. Such a perspective focuses on the then young author’s masterly drawing on Anglo-American Modernism (E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad and, most of all, Virginia Woolf) to read South African experience through the refined lens of psychological, symbolic and intertextual patterns. Like a self-conscious sculptor venturing to make a statuary mould with too fine-grained materials, Gordimer thus succeeds in showing both the extraordinary potentialities and the epistemological limits of Western literary tradition and its experimental forms when facing the stark complexities of South African reality.
L’articolo esamina “Occasion for Loving” (1963), il terzo romanzo di Nadine Gordimer, da un punto di vista che non sembra essere stato ancora debitamente sviluppato. Questa prospettiva si focalizza sul dialogo profondo e consapevole che l’autrice istituì con il Modernismo angloamericano (E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad e, in misura ancora maggiore, Virginia Woolf), leggendo l’esperienza sudafricana alla luce di affinati parametri e referenti psicologici, simbolici, intertestuali. Come uno scultore che si appresta a modellare una statua con materiali “filigranati”, Gordimer riesce nell’intento di mostrare sia le potenzialità straordinarie, sia i limiti epistemologici della tradizione letteraria novecentesca e del suo sperimentalismo a fronte delle specificità e delle aporie della realtà sudafricana.
"Africanizing Modernism": osservazioni su "Occasion for Loving" di Nadine Gordimer
GIOVANNELLI, LAURA
2015-01-01
Abstract
This paper analyses “Occasion for Loving” (1963), Nadine Gordimer’s third novel, from a point of view which, though deserving consideration, does not seem to have been properly developed as yet. Such a perspective focuses on the then young author’s masterly drawing on Anglo-American Modernism (E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad and, most of all, Virginia Woolf) to read South African experience through the refined lens of psychological, symbolic and intertextual patterns. Like a self-conscious sculptor venturing to make a statuary mould with too fine-grained materials, Gordimer thus succeeds in showing both the extraordinary potentialities and the epistemological limits of Western literary tradition and its experimental forms when facing the stark complexities of South African reality.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
