Siti Through Pasolini: Travels in Fiction and Non-Fiction

  • Valentina Sturli Sorbonne Université
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6556
Keywords: Walter Siti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, travel writing, United Arab Emirates, non-fiction, fiction

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between works by two authors who are explicitly bound by similarities in the themes they tackle and the form they use: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s L’odore dell’India [The Scent of India] (1962) and Walter Siti’s Il canto del diavolo (2009). Pasolini’s journey is to a place perceived as both ancient and mysterious, miserable yet splendid, while Siti – who visited the United Arab Emirates in 2009 – finds himself in a country characterised by kitsch and contemporary hypercapitalism. Siti’s approach differs from Pasolini’s in that he deliberately merges the genres of autofiction and travel writing. The article will show how his writing about the Emirates aims to question the validity of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, as part of a specific strategy for the depiction of reality.

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Author Biography

Valentina Sturli, Sorbonne Université

After graduating from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Valentina Sturli undertook a research doctorate at the University of Padua and is currently teaching Italian language and literature at the UFR d’Études Italiennes at Sorbonne Université (Paris). Her specialist fields are the history of Italian literary criticism, literary theory and comparative literature. She has published essays on contemporary Italian and French literature, on supernatural horror and on television serials, and is one of the editors of F. Orlando’s posthumously published work Il soprannaturale letterario (Einaudi 2017) and of the collection of essays Vecchi Maestri e Nuovi Mostri. Tendenze e prospettive della narrativa horror all’inizio del nuovo millennio (Mimesis, 2019). In addition, she is the author of the volume Figure dell’invenzione (Quodlibet, 2020), publication of which is imminent.

Published
2019-12-27
How to Cite
SturliV. (2019). Siti Through Pasolini: Travels in Fiction and Non-Fiction. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (3), 791-810. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6556
Issue
No 3 (2019): The forms and the days. Representations of everyday life in literature, audiovisual, visual and performing arts
Section
Varia

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