Italo Calvino's Architecture of Lightness

The Utopian Imagination in An Age of Urban Crisis


Cover of the book Italo Calvino's Architecture of Lightness by Letizia Modena, Taylor and Francis
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Letizia Modena ISBN: 9781136730597
Publisher: Taylor and Francis Publication: May 9, 2011
Imprint: Routledge Language: English
Author: Letizia Modena
ISBN: 9781136730597
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Publication: May 9, 2011
Imprint: Routledge
Language: English

This study recovers Italo Calvino's central place in a lost history of interdisciplinary thought, politics, and literary philosophy in the 1960s. Drawing on his letters, essays, critical reviews, and fiction, as well as a wide range of works--primarily urban planning and design theory and history--circulating among his primary interlocutors, this book takes as its point of departure a sweeping reinterpretation of Invisible Cities. Passages from Calvino's most famous novel routinely appear as aphorisms in calendars, posters, and the popular literature of inspiration and self-help, reducing the novel to vague abstractions and totalizing wisdom about thinking outside the box. The shadow of postmodern studies has had a similarly diminishing effect on this text, rendering up an accomplished but ultimately apolitical novelistic experimentation in endless deconstructive deferrals, the shiny surfaces of play, and the ultimately rigged game of self-referentiality. In contrast, this study draws on an archive of untranslated Italian- and French-language materials on urban planning, architecture, and utopian architecture to argue that Calvino's novel in fact introduces readers to the material history of urban renewal in Italy, France, and the U.S. in the 1960s, as well as the multidisciplinary core of cultural life in that decade: the complex and continuous interplay among novelists and architects, scientists and artists, literary historians and visual studies scholars. His last love poem for the dying city was in fact profoundly engaged, deeply committed to the ethical dimensions of both architecture and lived experience in the spaces of modernity as well as the resistant practices of reading and utopian imagining that his urban studies in turn inspired.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

This study recovers Italo Calvino's central place in a lost history of interdisciplinary thought, politics, and literary philosophy in the 1960s. Drawing on his letters, essays, critical reviews, and fiction, as well as a wide range of works--primarily urban planning and design theory and history--circulating among his primary interlocutors, this book takes as its point of departure a sweeping reinterpretation of Invisible Cities. Passages from Calvino's most famous novel routinely appear as aphorisms in calendars, posters, and the popular literature of inspiration and self-help, reducing the novel to vague abstractions and totalizing wisdom about thinking outside the box. The shadow of postmodern studies has had a similarly diminishing effect on this text, rendering up an accomplished but ultimately apolitical novelistic experimentation in endless deconstructive deferrals, the shiny surfaces of play, and the ultimately rigged game of self-referentiality. In contrast, this study draws on an archive of untranslated Italian- and French-language materials on urban planning, architecture, and utopian architecture to argue that Calvino's novel in fact introduces readers to the material history of urban renewal in Italy, France, and the U.S. in the 1960s, as well as the multidisciplinary core of cultural life in that decade: the complex and continuous interplay among novelists and architects, scientists and artists, literary historians and visual studies scholars. His last love poem for the dying city was in fact profoundly engaged, deeply committed to the ethical dimensions of both architecture and lived experience in the spaces of modernity as well as the resistant practices of reading and utopian imagining that his urban studies in turn inspired.

More books from Taylor and Francis

Cover of the book Fashioning Teenagers by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book The Dyslexic Brain by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Marston, Rivalry, Rapprochement, and Jonson by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Local Societies in Bronze Age Northern Europe by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Sustainability in the Water Energy Food Nexus by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Professional Practice in Sport Psychology by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Smallholders, Forest Management and Rural Development in the Amazon by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Overlooking the Visual by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Learning and Literacy over Time by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Imperial Theme - Wilson Knight by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Making a Difference: Progressive Values in Public Administration by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Gender, Sport, and the Role of Alter Ego in Roller Derby by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Japan's Emerging Youth Policy by Letizia Modena
Cover of the book Trade Investment and the Environment by Letizia Modena
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy