V.S. Naipaul: lo sguardo e la ricomposizione identitaria in The Enigma of Arrival

Autori

  • Adele Tiengo Università degli Studi di Milano

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/4638

Parole chiave:

Letteratura postcoloniale, V.S. Naipaul, Sguardo in letteratura, Giorgio De Chirico, Arte e riproduzione tecnica

Abstract

In this essay I will explore Naipaul’s novel The Enigma of Arrival (1987), focusing on the problematic theme of identity in relation to visual perception. It is my aim to analyze how his use of visual art – with particular reference to painters John Constable and Giorgio de Chirico – confirms the preeminence of visual fruition on other forms of experience in the development of the narrative. First, I will expose Naipaul's choice to deliver to his readership a text that complicates not only the idea of national belonging, but also the notions of literary genre and canon. Then, I will focus on a close reading of the first section of the novel by analyzing his use of the term pairs see/know and change/death. Finally, I will show that it is along these two traces and, more specifically, along the preferential trajectory of sight, that the narrator interrogates himself about his quest for identity.

The narrator approaches both Constable’s and De Chirico’s paintings through reproductions and he strongly emphasizes the second-hand quality of his experience of art fruition. Rather than a matter of purely aesthetic observations, Naipaul’s focus on reproductions is a means through which the narrator gives voice to his colonial anxieties in a changing world. The window can serve as a useful metaphor – and indeed, it frequently appears in the text – for the obstacles, fences, and filters that separate subject and object of observation.

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Biografia autore

Adele Tiengo, Università degli Studi di Milano

Adele Tiengo è dottoranda in Lingue, Letterature e Culture Straniere presso l’Università degli Studi di Milano. I suoi interessi di ricerca sono rivolti prevalentemente alla letteratura nordamericana contemporanea e all’ecocritica, con attenzione all’intreccio fra scienza e distopia nei testi più recenti dell’autrice canadese Margaret Atwood. Nell’ultimo anno ha partecipato a convegni accademici in Europa e negli Stati Uniti, presentando contributi sulle narrazioni apocalittiche novecentesche e sulla presenza letteraria e culturale del tema del cannibalismo fra Otto e Novecento.

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Pubblicato

2015-01-27

Come citare

Tiengo, Adele. 2015. «V.S. Naipaul: Lo Sguardo E La Ricomposizione Identitaria in The Enigma of Arrival». Altre Modernità, gennaio, 196-213. https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/4638.