Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature

Looking at five of Italo Calvino''s often neglected early novels: The Young People of Po, The Cloven Viscount, The Baron in the Trees, The Non-Existent Knight, and The Watcher, Eugenio Bolongaro argues that these works, written between 1948 and 1963, contain a sustained meditation on the role of the intellectual and on the irreducible ethical and political dimension of literature. This meditation provides an insight into a crucial moment in Calvino''s development as a writer, and allows Bolongaro to lay the groundwork for a more ''political'' reading of Calvino''s later work.

Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature firmly situates Calvino within his historical context – the cultural revival of post-World War II Italy – by relating these early novels to Calvino''s political and critical writings which played an important role in the cultural debates of the time. This approach provides a key to understanding Calvino''s work in a new light, ably demonstrating that Calvino''s full literary significance cannot be understood in isolation from the politics and cultural movements of the period. One of the few book-length English-language works on Calvino''s early writings, Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literatur will prove to be an indispensable tool to Italianists and literary studies scholars.