Description
TitleI bambini e la mafia
Date Created2011
Other Date2011-10 (degree)
Extentviii, 278 p. : ill.
DescriptionThis dissertation examines the representation of children and the Mafia in 21st century Italian texts, by analyzing them both in terms of their adherence to bildungsroman standards and of their significance within the tradition of the Mafia-genre. In addition, I demonstrate how these texts establish a connection with the aesthetic models of Italian Neorealism. This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each with a specific theoretical approach. In the first chapter, I use a Freudian-Jungian perspective and Turner’s anthropological studies to show how the transition into adulthood in Certi bambini and Gomorra follows the pattern of a "masculinization", which is understood as a process through which the male child integrates into the paternal culture of the Mafia, as he internalizes the typical values of the "man of honor". In chapter two, I analyze how the child’s unwillingness to integrate into the Mafia culture, both in I cento passi and Io non ho paura, brings about a violent father-son confrontation, ultimately resulting in a symbolic parricide. Here, too, I utilize a psychoanalytic approach, drawing in Freud’s oedipal complex, as well as in Lacan’s Name-of-the-Father. The third chapter has a philosophical-anthropological frame, drawing support in René Girard’s studies on the sacrificial victim. I show how the presence of the child-martyr, depicted as figura Christi, reduplicates the idea of sacrifice carried out by Placido Rizzotto and Alla luce del sole. The death of the innocent child mirrors the sacrifice of the anti-Mafia hero and functions as a means of expiation and redemption. The fourth chapter is gender-charged as it deals with the representation of the female child within the Mafia. Drawing in gender and queer theory, specifically in the works of Cixous, De Beauvoir and Butler, I demonstrate how the female protagonists of Canto al deserto and La siciliana ribelle come to represent a new type of woman in the male-dominated Mafia world. I suggest that in their transitional state from childhood to adulthood, we see the symbol of a historic transition taking place within the Mafia patriarchal order, in which, despite all contradictions, the woman is emerging from her "invisibility" and becoming more empowered.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
NoteIncludes vita
Noteby Lara Santoro
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageita
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.