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Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood, editors, Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante.
West Lafayette, Indiana: Perdue UP, 2006. 309 pages.
In his revisionist psychoanalytic literary theory, Harold Bloom points out how every new generation of writers struggles with an "anxiety of influence"- an "oedipal stage" during which the legacies of earlier poets loom large. For Bloom, originality is achieved when writers who have internalized the works of others break free from direct influence by superimposing their own vision and voice upon such works, thus escaping the menacing power of their predecessors.
Elsa Morante's subversive yet traditional approach combines imagination with historical, ethical and psychoanalytical genres, enabling her to achieve an equilibrium between old and new narrative aesthetics and secure a place in the Western literary canon. Morante's multifaceted style is part of a literary continuum, one she shares with both her predecessors and successors.
It is from this premise that the volume Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante edited by Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood, develops. In this insightful collection of twelve scholarly essays, the editors offer contemporary theoretical, critical and biographical studies which combine philological analysis with cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches and...