Italo Calvino on “ Invisible cities.” Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, 8, 37–42.Ĭalvino, I. Harcourt Brace Jovanonich Publishers.Ĭalvino, I. Italo Calvino: The place of the emperor in Invisible cities. The Johns Hopkins University Press.īarthes, R. In The Friday book: Essays and other non-fiction (pp. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.īarth, J. The author in criticism: Italo Calvino’s authorial image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, it is shown that by manipulating structure and the tenets of postmodernism, Calvino reflects the nature of postmodern urban experience in Invisible Cities.īaldi, E. It is concluded that Calvino engages in a self-reflexive dialogue with his readers and, at the same time, uses his characters to reflect the agents of this conversation. Following Linda Hutcheon’s theory on postmodern parody, this study explores the parodic features of Calvino’s novel in relation to the medieval book and their implications for a reading of Invisible Cities. Identifying such connections could lead to insightful thoughts about a particular text and consequently a deeper understanding of literature in general. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a reconstruction of The Travels of Marco Polo, but despite the strong connections between the two texts, little attempts have been made to apply this intertextual relationship in a reading of Invisible Cities. The postmodern idea of “return to the origin” of a literary text characterizes almost all literature.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino