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

Publication: Italica

Publication Date: 22-SEP-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 American Association of Teachers of Italian

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,...

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