“Dei giri in bicicletta tra un capitolo e l’altro”: "Lunario" chronotopes

Résumé

Lunario del Paradiso by Gianni Celati could be read through Bachtin’s concept of chronotope, especially because of his very rich repertoire of narrative places. In this case, however, the need to call into question also the temporal dimension, in addition to the spatial one, requires us to consider the relationship along the story between the narrator and the character – both called as "I". The variations made by Celati in the different editions of the novel (1989 and 1996) also allow us to recognize an original attempt to define, as the true narrative place, the space of writing, that we could read today as a mindscape, a mental landscape that let the formless intensity of the lived experience and the (de)formative instance of a retrospective narration live together.