ABSTRACT

This volume offers a detailed analysis of selected cases in the reception, translation and artistic reinterpretation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972) around the world.

The book traces the many different ways in which Calvino's modern classic has been read, translated and adapted in Brazil, France, the Netherlands and Flanders, Mexico, Romania, Scandinavia, the USSR, China, Poland, Japan and Australia. It also offers analyses of the relation between Calvino's book and, respectively, the East and Africa, as well as reflections on the book's inspiration for, and resonance in, dance, architecture and art. The volume thus traces the diversity in the reception and circulation of Invisible Cities in different countries and continents, offering a much wider framework for the discussion of Calvino’s masterpiece than before, and a more detailed picture of its cultural and linguistic ramifications.

This book will be of interest to scholars in Comparative Literature, World Literature, Translation Studies, Italian Studies, Romance Languages, European Studies, Dance, Architecture and Media Studies, as well as to scholars specialised in paratext and reception.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

part |99 pages

Part I

chapter 1|15 pages

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities in Brazil

A bridge between literature and other fields

chapter 2|19 pages

Invisible Cities in France

The values of the Six Memos in the French translation and retranslation

chapter 3|23 pages

Calvino's Invisible Cities in the Netherlands and Flanders

(In)visibilities in translation and reception

chapter 4|22 pages

Strategic Occidentalism in Mexico

Comparing two translations of Invisible Cities in the context of the Generación de Medio Siglo

chapter 5|18 pages

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities in Romania

A pulviscular presence

part |87 pages

Part II

chapter 6|20 pages

Invisible Cities in Scandinavia

Editorial journeys, migrant signs and paratextual loops

chapter 7|22 pages

Unpublished cities in the USSR

The Soviet critical reception of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1973–1991)

chapter 8|20 pages

Italo Calvino and Invisible Cities in China

A narrative wonder

chapter 9|23 pages

Invisible Cities in Poland

A journey through languages and memory

part |94 pages

Part III

chapter 10|17 pages

Invisible Cities in Japan

Fluid resonances in architecture and literature

chapter 11|17 pages

Calvino travels to the East

Invisible Cities, open architecture, and orientalism

chapter 12|11 pages

Invisible Cities

A performative adaptation

chapter 14|14 pages

A Calvinian architecture

An Italian-born artist living in Australia

chapter 15|13 pages

Epilogue

An Italian perspective on the travels of Le città invisibili in the world