Anthony Julian Tamburri. Semiotics of Re-Reading: Guido Gozzano, Aldo Palazzeschi, and Italo Calvino.(Book Review)

Anthony Julian Tamburri. Semiotics of re-reading: Guido Gozzano, Aldo Palazzeschi, and Italo Calvino. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003.

Anthony Tamburri's latest book marks a return, after years dedicated to the discovery and discussion of Italian-American authors, to a critical analysis of mainland Italian literature. In this collection of old and new materials on the semiotics of re-reading, the author revisits some of his favorite Italian writers through the optics of the retro-lector, a backward glancing reader who explores "how each writer, at one point in his career, informed his text(s) with certain ideas, codes, and referents which had offered no previous intertextual backdrop--that is, a sign-function repertoire steeped in tradition--for the reader's successful decoding of the text" (17). Tamburri's objective is to show how, by reading the early works of Gozzano, Palazzeschi, and Calvino before and after having read their later work and theoretical formulations, one can reach new conclusions about these earlier texts. By adopting this retroactive reading strategy it is possible to glean that Guido Gozzano's self-portrait, which has been situated in the poems of 1909, was already present in his 1905 poetry collection. Similarly, the concepts of leggerezza, approfondimento, and equilibrio explicitly discussed by Palazzeschi in 1914-1915 now emerge from and help clarify possible readings of his novels :riflessi (1908) and Il codice di Perela (1911). Finally, Calvino's engagement in self-reflexive authorship, which has been so far attributed to his work after 1968, can be pre-dated to 1962 and his book Marcovaldo. Semiotics of Re-Reading is divided in five chapters, framed by an introduction and "A Tentative Conclusion." The first chapter provides the theoretical background for Tamburri's formulations, while the remaining discuss, in chronological order, Gozzano, Palazzeschi (two chapters are devoted to this author), and Calvino.

Tamburri's introductory chapter expands on the notion of retro-lector, a construct the author had already discussed in previous publications. In aligning himself with previous reader-response theoreticians (from Iser to Gadamer, from Chatman to Eco and Calvino himself), Tamburri explains, in readily accessible language, the important function performed by this specialized type of reader: "Returning to text A after having read text B offers the reader--that is, the retro-lector--intertextual knowledge which may better aid in their interpretation of the first text's codes and referents; knowledge, it should be added, not available to the contemporary reader" (28). Less clear is the author's attempt to make this reading appear as a subversive "decentralization of the verbal-ideological world" in which the originally "non-canonical" book was produced (29).

One might have hoped that the following chapter, on Gozzano's poetics, were elaborated more carefully. Tamburri clalms that a rereading of Gozzano's early poetry in light of his latter discarding of previous traditions (especially Carducci, Pascoli, and D'Annunzio) makes it possible to discern early signs of this rejection in poems like "A Massimo Bontempelli" and "La via del rifugio" (41). While Tamburri's assertion is certainly supported by a retrospective reading, one does not need such a reading to make these claims about Gozzano and his work (surprisingly, little of the vast body of Italian criticism that focuses on Gozzano's early poetics is brought to bear on Tamburri's discussion). Moreover, readers who are not familiar with Gozzano's opus might be confused by the constant back and forth analysis, and by the lack of additional background information to the texts. For example, we are never told that "A Massimo Bontempelli" (1904) was published separately ...