Marcovaldo, by Italo Calvino:on the search and (in)ability of ecological coexistence

Abstract

Cheryll Glotfelty when considering that “[…] ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of coherence and usefulness of responses to environmental crisis” (1996, p. xx), as well as understanding that the crisis concerns not only the ecology of the environment, but also the social relations and the psyche, as understood by Felix Guattari (1990), this text intends to explore Italo Calvino’s speech on the tales of Marcovaldo ovvero Le stagioni in città (1963) as a response to the ecological crises due to the unstable situation in which society finds itself facing in the current period of modernism. Besides the two theorists already mentioned, Greg Garrard (2006) and Michel Serres’ ideas (1991) will be used. The idea is not to exhaust any possibility of analysis of the presented work, but to give indications which may form the basis for other studies, once each tale of the collection holds great potential for ecocriticism analysis and therefore, for the response to the level of awareness of the ecological crisis, arising from the perception crisis of man’s place in nature