<i>Looking Back in Anger</i>. Bianciardi and the Masks of Melancholia

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept and perception of melancholia in Luciano Bianciardi’s works, in the context of his cultural framework and especially the American authors he deeply knew as translator. Through close reading and discourse analysis, the melancholia originating from Bianciardi’s critique to contemporary life and his simultaneous tragic inability to find a suitable alternative is traced in some of his literary works and compared to the American antecedents. The conclusion pinpoints the similarities between the social and cultural representation brought about by authors such as Saul Bellow and John Barth, and the (even more complex and contradictory) reading of Italian society of the Sixties performed in Bianciardi’s works.

Keywords

• Bianciardi
• Malinconia
• Parodia
• Alienazione
• Tragico