Poetry and Visuality in Italy From Futurism to the Neo-Avant-Garde

Abstract

This dissertation explores the intermedia encounters between modern Italian poetry and visuality in broad terms (including painting, typography, photography, cinema, music, and other aspects of culture) from Futurism to the Neo-Avant-Garde, by means of a material catalog of exceptional artifacts, often neglected by criticism due to their obscure hybridism and transgressive nature. These materials encompass a wide range of visual expression: from the Futurist metal poetry book "L’anguria lirica" (1934); to concrete and object-poems (e.g. Nanni Balestrini’s "Il sasso appeso," 1961; or Giulia Niccolai’s "POEMA & OGGETTO," 1974); collage and video poems (i.e. Ketty La Rocca’s "Appendice per una supplica," 1972); the philosophical form of scrittura visuale developed by Stelio M. Martini to foster the transformation of poetry into a cognitive writing process; and finally Arrigo Lora Totino’s sonorous and dynamic performances of the 1970s and 1980s. The study utilizes a multidisplinary methodology – integrating literature, art history, semiotic and technological aesthetics, visual studies, graphic culture, and digital practices – in order to reimagine the evolution of visual stimuli in Italy as a driving force of poetic modernity. By illuminating the underlying collectivity of these trends, my research proposes an alternative to the reductive tendencies of mainstream Italian Studies, recognizing instead the need for a distinctive expressive field beyond those traditionally attributed to literature and art. The shifting paradigm of visuality ultimately allows to redefine the theoretical and interpretive possibilities of modern Italian poetry in its own right, stretching its boundaries and testing its critical response to the most pressing issues of the last century (including questions of identity, mass culture, social issues, and gender discourse). It furthermore highlights the characteristics which enabled poetry to resist and persist to the present day: openness, ambiguity, mobility, and a vital power to rebuild the interactions between selfhood and the world at a cognitive and productive level.