Eros and language in If on a winter's night a traveler

Abstract

To what extent and in what way does eros shape Calvino’s writing? The article offers a new and original in-depth study on the subject – which has been discussed from a holistic perspective only by Gabriele (1994) – in an interdisciplinary way that combines a literary and a linguistic perspective. The focus of the analysis is on If on a winter’s night a traveller, particularly on the erotic scene of the 7th chapter, characterized by the description of the sexual act as a reading act. The article shows how, both on a literary and a linguistic level, the novel is pervaded by eroticism in a deeper way than it seems. This is clear, for example, in several passages communicating with each other, in questions whose answer is revealed after a few pages and in repetitions of keywords. The structure of the chapters, like the series of events, follows a pattern that seems to find a raison d’être in the erotic theme as well. The author conveys his thought about eros through peculiar linguistic strategies that seem to be the natural consequence of his theory about the difficulties found in the conduction of a literary representation of eros