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Italo Calvino's The Seasons in the City

This paper will discuss Italo Calvino's book Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City. This book is a collection of twenty short stories, all of which depict events in the life of the title character, Marcovaldo. The stories are placed within the book in a seasonal order; in other words, the first story takes place in Spring, the second in Summer, and so on, consecutively. This gives the effect of the reader experiencing a span of several years duration in the life of Marcovaldo.

Marcovaldo is a poor workman living in an industrial city in northern Italy during the 1950's and '60's. Although he is a factory worker in an urban area, Marcovaldo "possessed an eye ill-suited to city life," and is always noticing the signs of nature in his environment, "discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence" (1). Although it is never stated whether or not Marcovaldo himself ever lived in the countryside, his fixation with nature in the midst of the city makes him a transitional figure who represents the results of urban migration on people who a few generations ago belonged to an agricultural peasant class. Where Marcovaldo himself is thrilled by nature, his children, who are thoroughly urban, seem to misunderstand any references to natural things. The stories about Marcovaldo and his family all have a humorous irony about them, which often concerns his attempts to merge his perceptions of nature into his urban life.

The first story, "Mushrooms in the city," which takes place in the Spring, is a good example of how Marcovaldo's misguided perceptions of nature put him at odds with urban life. The story tells of how Marcovaldo spots a clump of mushrooms growing under the trees at his tram stop. Finding the mushrooms excites his imagination, making him feel that "the gray and wretched world surrounding him seemed suddenly generous with hidden riches; something could still be expected of l...

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Italo Calvino's The Seasons in the City. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 13:30, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690587.html