Contemporary Literature and Museum
Contemporary Literature and Museum (research project by Corinne Pontillo – University of Catania)
Under the wide research field related to the relationship between literature and museum, the presence of literary works that mention a museum or present it as a setting place is representative of multiple ways of re-elaborating the characteristics of a public exhibition space on the basis of expressive intentions.
The research project Contemporary Literature and Museum focuses on the representation of museum institutions or imaginary museums within literary texts of the XX and XXI centuries. Its principal aim is to propose a critical ‘map’ of the occurrences of this visual dispositive through various thematic, formal and rhetorical diegetic patterns.
The methodological background of the project therefore concerns literary theory as well as visual culture, but particular attention is also given to the cultural contexts in which the books are published. In relation to this aspect, two further declinations of the project are based on the study of: museums or exhibitions created and curated by writers (such as Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence and Michel Houellebecq’s Rester vivant), and exhibitions on writers (e.g. Favoloso Calvino, held at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome).
The purpose of these insights is to explore, on the one side, different tracks of ‘authorship’ in an extra-textual dimension and, on the other, different ways of retrospectively exposing authors’ thoughts.
Publications
– Musei di carta. Esposizioni e collezioni d’arte nella letteratura contemporanea, Rome, Carocci, 2022.
Participation in conferences
– Annual conference of COMPALIT (Associazione di teoria e storia comparata della letteratura) Finzioni. Verità, bugie, mondi possibili (Catania, 13-15 dicembre 2018), with a paper entitled La realtà della finzione ne L’innocenza degli oggetti di Orhan Pamuk.
– Spiritismo e letteratura italiana tra il Settecento e il Duemila (KU Leuven, 29-30 September), with a paper entitled «Solo i fantasmi ritrovo». Anime e musei nella narrativa di Alberto Savinio.
Review
Orhan Pamuk, L’innocenza degli oggetti. Il museo dell’innocenza, Istanbul, Torino, Einaudi, 2012, in Arabeschi, n° 2, giugno-dicembre 2013, http://www.arabeschi.it/orhan-pamuk-l-innocenza-degli-oggetti/.