Post-War Ecosophic Intuition: About the (Im)Possibility of Ecological Coexistence in Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City by Italo Calvino

Abstract

Taking in consideration, alongside Cheryll Glotfelty, that “ecocriticism seeks to evaluate text ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness in the responses to environmental crisis” (Glotfelty and Fromm 1996, p. 5), and that crisis refers not only to the ecology of the environment but also to that of social relations and the psyche, as proposed by Félix Guattari (1990), understanding that there is a lack of equilibrium among the three registries that provoke the crisis lived by the contemporary individual, in a broad spectrum, this work intends to understand how the character Marcovaldo, from Italo Calvino’s Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City (1963), articulates modes of being, dwelling and surviving in a great metropolis, through the adoption of postures coherent with what we would call, later, ecosophy. In addition to the two aforementioned theorists, the ideas of Garrard (2006) and Serres (1991) will be used. Also, we intend to show how much the stories in the collection hold great potential for ecocritical reading and, therefore, for a response to the level of awareness about the ecological crisis.

Keywords

• ecocriticism
• ecosophy
• Marcovaldo