ITALIAN WRITER VINCENZO CONSOLO VISITS DEPARTMENT OF ITALIAN, UCC

The internationally acclaimed Italian writer Vincenzo Consolo will visit staff and students of the Department of Italian on Thursday 22 October 2009.

There will be a special screening of the award winning documentary L’isola in me: in viaggio con Vincenzo Consolo (The Island Inside: A Journey Through Vincenzo Consolo’s Sicily), directed by Ludovica Tortora de Falco (2008). The documentary will be in Italian with English subtitles.

After the documentary Consolo will join staff and students in a discussion about literature, culture, commitment, politics and society in Sicily and Italy today.  

Date: Thursday 22 October, 2009

Time: 10.00 am – 12.00

Venue: Brookfield (BHSC) G.06

ALL WELCOME

Vincenzo Consolo was born in Sicily in 1933. He published his first novel La ferita dell’aprile in 1963. With the publication in 1976 of Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner) he won international renown. The novel was soon followed by other experimental narratives: Lunaria (1985), Retablo (1987) and the collection of short stories Le pietre di Pantalica (1988). In 1990s he published Nottetempo, casa per casa, L’olivo e l’olivastro and Lo Spasimo di Palermo. He has won numerous national and international prizes, with critics pointing to the uniqueness of his language, which is at once poetic, memorial and palimpsestic.

The language and form of Consolo’s narratives indicate a deeply held ethical stance and aesthetic overhauling - through mimesis, parody, fragmentation, wilful gaps and creative ruptures - of novels dominated by an authoritative voice in an enlightened language.

On Friday 23 October Consolo will also deliver the keynote lecture, entitled ‘Dal buio della zolfara alla luce dell’agora: Leonardo Sciascia’, at the Leonardo Sciascia: vent’anni dopo conference. For details see http://www.ucc.ie/en/italian/Conferences/LeonardoSciasciaventannidopo/