“Una Stampa Lucida”: Traumatic images and ruinous landscapes in Elsa Morante's La Storia and Aracoeli

Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin

Abstract

The article provides a new comparative reading between Morante’s La Storia and Aracoeli through the lens of trauma studies. Arguing that both works negotiate individual and collective trauma, it identifies the aesthetic tropes of images and spatio-temporal topographies as powerful expressions of loss. A close reading of (photographic) images, postcards, visual dreamscapes, material topographies and palimpsestic temporalities provides new insights into Morante’s poetics of trauma, shaped by the close entanglement of a realist narrative surface and the uncanny deposits that underlie it. Referencing the latest studies in the imagistic and spatial negotiation of trauma, the comparative reading underscores the lasting legacy of La Storia as a traumatic sub-text in the author’s later narrative production.

Citation

Wehling-Giorgi, K. (2024). “Una Stampa Lucida”: Traumatic images and ruinous landscapes in Elsa Morante's La Storia and Aracoeli. Annali d'italianistica, 42, 105-124

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 14, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Nov 5, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: May 7, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 5, 2024
• Journal: Annali d'italianistica
• Print ISSN: 0741-7527
• Publisher: Annali d’Italianistica, Inc.
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 42
• Pages: 105-124
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2433992
• Publisher URL: https://annali.org/volume-42-2024/