A saving language: everyday’s memories in Elias Canetti and Natalia Ginzburg

  • Claudia Cerulo University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6547

Abstract

The purpose of this study is a comparative analysis of two novels that have chosen the concept of ‘everyday’ as object of their narrative: Lessico famigliare by Natalia Ginzburg (1963) and La lingua salvata. Storia di una giovinezza by Elias Canetti (1977). Canetti and Ginzburg describe a twice-lived daily family life. The first time as unconscious spectators: children who desire to enter the world of adults, which surrounds them repeating the sounds and words, while not understanding them. The second time as absolute directors, repeating the mnemonic game of those who have observed and heard, but possessing the power to make a choice about what to tell, becoming protagonists and storytellers of their own story. The study aims to analyse different elements. Firstly, the function of the word as a marker of everyday life and memory, secondly the secret and enchanted language of the two family communities will be analysed alongside reflections of language philosophy and in particular the function of everyday language in the novel, focusing especially on the parents described in the two texts. Then I will analyse the structure of the two novels and in particular the dichotomy between word and silence, comparing the epic of everyday life and the explicit intention to silence personal events or historical traumas, in order to reduce them to the memory of individual words that resonate and remember the event.

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Author Biography

Claudia Cerulo, University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum

Claudia Cerulo was born in Benevento in 1995. She graduated from University of Naples Federico II and Universität Osnabrück. She is a PhD student (DESE - Les Littératures de l'Europe Unie) at University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum.

Published
2019-12-27
How to Cite
CeruloC. (2019). A saving language: everyday’s memories in Elias Canetti and Natalia Ginzburg. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (3), 147-172. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6547
Issue
No 3 (2019): The forms and the days. Representations of everyday life in literature, audiovisual, visual and performing arts
Section
Monographic section I

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