Pirandello’s Visual Philosophy: Imagination and Thought Across Media

This collection draws on cutting-edge work that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries to offer new perspectives on the importance of visuality and the imagination in the work of Luigi Pirandello, the great Italian modernist. The volume re-examines traditional critical notions central to the study of Pirandello by focusing on the importance of the visual imagination in his poetics and aesthetics, an area of multimedia investigation which has not yet received ample attention in English-language books. Putting scholarship on Pirandello in conversation with new work on the multimedia dimensions of modernism, the volume examines how Pirandello worked across and was adapted through multiple media. It also brings Pirandello into a cross-disciplinary dialogue with new approaches to Italian cultural studies to show how his work remains relevant to scholarly conversations across the field. The essays in this collection highlight the ways in which Pirandello is engaged not only in literature and theatre but also in the visual arts, film, and music. At the same time, they emphasize the ways in which this multimedia creativity enables Pirandello to pursue complex philosophical thoughts, and how scholars’ interpretation of his works can provide new insights into problems facing us today. Crossing from aesthetics and a study of modernist notions of creative imagination into studies of multimedia works and adaptations, the volume argues that Pirandello should be understood as a thinker in images whose legacy can be felt across the arts and into the realm of 21st-century theories of literary cognition.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Lisa Sarti (BMCC, The City University of New York) and Michael Subialka (University of California, Davis) THEATER Pirandello: Silent Scenes, Spoken Pictures Julie Dashwood (University of Cambridge) “My Portrait Come to Life!” – Visions of Self in Pirandello’s Henry IV Kyle Gillette (Trinity University) The Display of Power from the Theatrical Stage to Domestic Life in Tonight We Improvise Pietro Frassica (Princeton University) PAINTING Impressionism and the “Feeling of Disquietude” in Luigi Pirandello’s Pictorial Imaginary Carlo Di Lieto (Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples) Deconstructing the Self: Luigi Pirandello’s Thought and Fausto Pirandello’s Paintings Daniela Bini (University of Texas, Austin) CINEMA George Fitzmaurice’s As You Desire Me (1932) and Greta Garbo’s Elusive Identity Claudia Consolati (University of Pennsylvania) Stolen Goods: Pirandello and Michelangelo Antonioni's La signora senza camelie (1953) Andrea Malaguti (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) MUSIC In Defense of Marginalized Music: Pirandello from the 1910s through the 1930s Daniela Bombara (Independent Scholar) The Final Message of Art: The Fable of the Changeling Son by Pirandello and Malipiero Daniela Gangale (Independent Scholar) PHILOSOPHY Reflecting on the Threshold: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Liminality in Luigi Pirandello’s On Humor and One, No One and a Hundred Thousand John Mastrogianakos (York University) Works Cited

About the Author :
Lisa Sarti is assistant professor of Italian at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Michael Subialka is assistant professor of comparative literature and Italian at the University of California, Davis.