Os NOSSOS ANTEPASSADOS, by Italo Calvino, as an allegory of the modern SUBJETC

Abstract

The national research project, developed in Theory and Literary History Master at the Institute of Language Studies (IEL), relates literature and humanities in the analysis of Nossos Antepassados, by Italo Calvino. This relationship is possible because the work itself offers us a universe of critical analysis about the contemporary society, which the author does not understand as post-modernity, but as a historical moment that is defined as modernity. This contemporary aspect is found in a context not only of destruction of nature in the name of the progress, but also in a context of enthronement of the commodity, whose subjective ideals are imposed in a ubiquitous form to everyday life; an enthronement that is a denial of human individuality in favor of affirmation of a mercantile logic and of a reason called instrumental by frankfurtians. The aim of our study is to reflect on the main characters of Calvino's work as allegorical figurations of the modern subject: we, contemporary, as heirs of the modernity project started by our ancestors and experienced by us today. For this purpose, it is fundamentally important the critical questioning of Italian modernity concepts, developed both by Calvino's work critics as by Calvino himself, as well as the questioning concept of the modern subject, always in the light of Calvino's work. (AU)