The Photographic Eye: Poetry and the Visual in 1950s and 1960s Italian Experimental Writers

Abstract

This PhD thesis argues that, in the 1950s and 1960s, several Italian experimental writers developed photographic and cinematic modes of writing with the aim to innovate poetic form and content. By adopting an interdisciplinary framework, which intersects literary studies with visual and intermedial studies, this thesis analyses the works of Antonio Porta, Amelia Rosselli, and Edoardo Sanguineti. These authors were particularly sensitive to photographic and cinematic media, which inspired their poetics. Antonio Porta’s poetry, for instance, develops in dialogue with the photographic culture of the time, and makes references to the photographs of crime news. Furthermore, his poetry relies on the technique of poetic montage, and juxtaposes photographic and cinematic sequences through the use of percussive meter and frequent punctuation. Amelia Rosselli, on the other hand, refers to photography as a medium to capture and record her life story. Her poetry seems to work like a camera, recording a precise personal experience in both space and time. The still camera and film camera also inspire her metrical system, presented in her manifesto of poetics Spazi metrici. Finally, Edoardo Sanguineti claims to see the world photographically through a camera eye as well as through a cinematic mind. His poetry also borrows formal techniques from other artistic practices – such as collage and montage – and aims to deconstruct normative syntax as a form of resistance to bourgeois hegemony. This thesis intends to provide new and unexplored perspectives on the work of the authors analysed. It also suggests that there is a broader interrelation of literary and photographic cultures beyond the presented case studies. In post-war Italy, experimental and neo-avant-garde writers reshaped their poetry in direct dialogue with both photography and cinema. By recognising that the interactions between literature, photography, and cinema lay at the core of the poetic research of several authors in the 1950s and 1960s, this thesis aims to fill a gap in Italian Studies scholarship on poetry and calls for further research in this area