Indeterminacy and the Reader's Engagement in the Italian Novel : Ungraspable - Laura Lucia Rossi

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Indeterminacy and the Reader's Engagement in the Italian Novel

Ungraspable

By: Laura Lucia Rossi

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Hardcover | 19 August 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
200 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.27

Hardcover

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What makes literature âliteraryâ? Some theories argue it is a certain degree of ungraspability â" openness, vagueness, or ambiguity that invites readersâ active participation in constructing meaning. This book examines five canonical twentieth-century Italian novels (by Tozzi, Landolfi, Vittorini, Gadda, and Ortese) that have consistently been described by critics as particularly âindeterminateâ or âungraspable.â Through these case studies, spanning fifty years of Italian literature, the book investigates how textual indeterminacy functions as a literary strategy rather than a shortcoming. Each novel employs different techniques to create indeterminacy: fragmented punctuation and syntax in Tozzi, fantastic elements and hesitation in Landolfi, dialogic openness in Vittorini, linguistic accumulation in Gadda, and genre hybridism in Ortese. These works challenged readersâ expectations decades before postmodernists like Calvino made such techniques commonplace. By analyzing how these novels manipulate indeterminacy and engage readers in meaning-making, this book contributes to our understanding of literary communication while offering fresh interpretations of key works in the Italian canon.

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