NEW TRENDS IN ITALIAN LITERATURE: FROM ECOCRITICISM TO MIGRANT LITERATURE

Abstract

In the present article the aim is to demonstrate that one of the ways to teach literature today, in the new millennium, when literary studies do not encourage interest among the new generations, could be through its relationship with other sciences, for example, with ecology. Since the 1970's, when ecocriticism was created, in a literary text the idea is to try to analyse the relationship between the individual and nature. Starting from the fact that in nature there are balanced relations, the ecocriticism is trying to overcome the hierarchical order imposed in the society by the secular centralism. The result of this order are the members that are marginalised and oppressed, the victims of the imposition of the concept of the vertical society which implies the dominance of some members over others. In the analysis the aim is to show that there are some contemporary literary texts that witness the attempt of exclusion of some characters, such as, for example, in the migrant literature in Italy, where the characters-immigrants are frequently discriminated. According to ecocriticism, in order to achieve a sustainable society, it is necessary to overcome these dicriminatory mechanism. Therefore, with this paper we try to find some literary examples in which, by the means of the autobiographical testimony, this attempt of dominance is rejected by the characters and they eventually find the way to integrate into the new society as well as to overcome exclusion and discrimination. In the analysis we examine some of these examples that we find in the literary work of the two contemporary authoresses in Italy: Igiaba Scego, and Laila Wadia.

Keywords

• migrant literature
• marginalisation
• discrimination
• hierarchy
• ecocriticism