Florian Mussgnug Libri

Giorgio Manganelli, a pioneering figure in Italian literature, is celebrated for his innovative approach to hybrid genres and open forms. His work is characterized by a flair for ostentation and theatricality, showcasing a penchant for elaborate language and rich imagery. Manganelli's diverse oeuvre includes prose fiction, literary criticism, drama, travel writing, and imaginative commentaries, reflecting his radical creativity and exploration of various literary styles.

Utopian literature provides a compelling vision of epistemological and moral clarity: a dream of harmony and justice. But in an age of surveillance, utopia is also the nightmare of a perfectly controlled, sealed and monitored world that leaves no room for ambivalence or discretion. In The Good Place, leading scholars of comparative literature explore this tension and examine the richness and diversity of utopian writing, from the genre’s earliest manifestations to the present. Utopia is seen as a tenacious force of the human imagination: a desire for renewal that manifests itself in the tension between social reality and the virtual worlds of unlived possibility. Notable for its engagement with a wide range of texts from different periods and national traditions, this book invites the reader to rethink ‘the good place’ from the specific perspective of literary studies and suggests that utopia, in the realm of fiction, is more than just a philosophical abstraction. Mediated by the experience of authors, characters and readers, utopian literature offers a transient but genuine experience of perfection, beyond the horizon of everyday lived experience.

Giorgio Manganelli (1922-1990), one of Italy’s most radical and original writers, went further than most in exploring the creative possibilities of hybrid genres and open forms. Ostentation, theatricality, and a love of drapery and verbal excess are defining features of his body of work, which ranges from prose fiction, literary criticism, and drama to travel writing, treatises, commentaries, and imaginary interviews. This study examines the wealth of Manganelli’s imagination – his grotesque animals, speaking corpses, and melancholy spectres – and argues that his spectacular eloquence was shaped by an exceptional awareness of literary and philosophical models. Following Manganelli’s lead, the author addresses issues such as the boundaries of meaningful language, the relationship between literary and visual texts, fantasy and realism, and the power of literature to express the apprehensions and intimations of human consciousness.