Between (Jan 2017)
The Cognition of Priapo. Caricature procedures in Carlo Emilio Gadda’s <i>Eros e Priapo</i>
Abstract
Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Eros e Priapo, written between 1944 and 1945 and published just in 1967, is a hybrid text blending the essay, the narrative sketch and the invective, and can be considered as a gallery of harsh literary caricatures, of verbal equivalents of figurative caricature, such as the repeated portraits of Mussolini, provided with a series of nicknames and misshapen descriptions. The present paper scrutinises rhetorical and stylistic procedures through which Gadda elaborates within literary writing both the techniques and the perceptive and cognitive bases of caricature, whith a shift from visual to verbal code. If the representation of the body, and particularly of the face, entails complex psychological, historical and political meanings, misshaping the public image of bodies caricature criticises the authorized representations of reality. As several neuroscientific researches demonstrated, from a cognitive perspective caricature can be considered as a tool for the comprehension of the world. The human mind selects, shapes and emphasises elements in order to detect patterns in the muddle of perceptions. For the human mind misshaping the world means to uncover its hidden features, which would remain unexpressed if not stressed. Similarly, as demonstrated by Eros e Priapo, caricature is a critical device, isolating and emphasising details to upset schemes, while revealing the psychological deformations produced by historical events.
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