Kafka's Italian Progeny

Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski is an assistant professor of Italian in Romance Studies at Duke University.

• IntroductionKafka, World Literature, and the Italian Literary LandscapeThe Place of Italian Literature in World Literature DebatesKafka’s Italian Reception: An OverviewMorante and Buzzati: Two Cases of Kafka Reception Kafka’s Italian Progeny: An Overview 1. Amerika in Italy: Kafka’s Realism, Pavese, and CalvinoKafka’s Amerika in ItalyThe Italian View of Kafka’s RealismCalvino’s Realist Kafka Amerika and The Path to the Spiders’ Nests: Finding and Losing the Way, All Over Again The Americas of Kafka and Pavese2. Dreams of Short Fiction after Kafka: Lalla Romano, Giorgio Manganelli, and Antonio TabucchiLyrical, Short Kafka Experimenting with Short, Short Works after Kafka The Transformations of Romano, Manganelli, and Tabucchi  3. Processi without End: The Mysteries of Dino Buzzati and Paola CaprioloKafka, Detective Fiction, and ItalyThe Structures of Suspense: Questions, Identity, and HomePrisons of Analysis and the Pull of Imagination4. Kafka’s Parental Bonds: The Family as Institution in Italian LiteratureThe Familial Institution in Kafka and Modern Italian Literature Svevo’s A Life and Ferrante’s Troubling Love: Societal Stress and the Bonds of FamilyLeaving Parental Bonds in Bontempelli’s The Son of Two Mothers and Morante’s Arturo’s Island5. The Human-Animal Boundary, Italian Style: Kafka’s Red Peter in Conversation with Svevo’s Argo, Morante’s Bella, and Landolfi’s TomboItalian Literature, Kafka, and Animal StudiesCommunication across Species: The Monologues of Kafka’s Red Peter and Svevo’s Argo Interspecial Communication: Landolfi’s Châli and Tombo, Morante’s Belli and ImmacolatellaThe Language of Animals and DialectsAnimal Bodies and Christian Spirit in Morante, Landolfi, and BuzzatiEpilogueCalvino’s Kafka and Kafka’s Italy

"Ziolkowski’s innovative research fills a gap in Italian comparative literature and explores the Kafkian tradition in Italy, one that has not been examined up until today."- Andrea Sartori (Annali d’italianistica)