Geografie letterarie del notturno: qualità degli spazi del buio in alcuni esempi di narrativa italiana del secondo Novecento

The geographical approach to the interdisciplinary field of Night Studies cannot ignore the perspectives offered by literary geographies. The cultural images of the night and the influences that darkness has on the perception of spaces, in fact, are mirrored in the important repertories provided by literature. The essay aims at offering an overview of typologies of representations of literary nocturnal environments, trying to sketch a possible classification of the “literary geographies of the night”. In the first two paragraphs a contextual epistemological frame of interpretation is provided, situating the cultural approach to darkscapes adopted by the authors. In the third paragraph, a series of examples taken by literature exemplify the potential literary contributions to geographical Night Studies. Literary examples include, among others, the works by Pier Paolo Pasolini (such as The Street Kids, 1955, where the night in the park of Villa Borghese in Rome assumes the role of a spatial-temporal suspension), the nocturnal topographies of the short novel Neither Here Nor Elsewhere. A Night in Bari by Gianrico Carofiglio (2008), the works by contemporary authors such as Paolo Morelli (Tale of the river Sangro, 2013). Giorgio Vasta (Displacement, 2010) and Marco Malvaldi (Tower in check, 2015).