Abstract
This chapter discusses Italo Svevo’s modernist novel La coscienza di Zeno, 1923 (Zeno’s Conscience, 2001), and two films by Michelangelo Antonioni, L’eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) and Blow-Up, 1966. The works of Svevo and Antonioni are presented as examples of creative engagements with things and objects, and in conjunction with current theoretical discourse on “thingness,” including Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology. The analysis treats La coscienza di Zeno separately and distinctly from L’eclisse and Blow-Up, respecting the chronological order of their inception, and differentiating, as a result, the modernist conscience of a society on the brink of radical existential transformations, and the early postmodern feelings of dissociation and alienation.
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Bartoloni, P. (2016). Fictional Objects. In: Objects in Italian Life and Culture. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94875-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94875-8_3
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-94874-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-94875-8
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