A Warm And Bright Dream

As one of the contemporary Italian novelists of great reputation, Italo, Calvino(1923-1985)has received the extensive concerns of world since the seventies. It has also set the fashion of "reading Calvino" in China in recent years. However, Calvino has never been listed among best seller writers, and study on him has never become so-called "Calvinoism" .The research on his masterpiece If on a winter's night a traveler, written in the seventies, is especially not enough at home due to it's language, culture difficulties and unusual writing form, etc. Therefore, this paper is aimed to analyze the narrative skills of this novel by means of close-reading, making every effort to reflect the innovation that Calvino done to the form of If on a winter's night a traveler, and to do some basic work for the further research on Calvino and his novel.It is divided into five parts:The preface surveys the current studies on If on a winter's night a tra veler in and out of China, and points out the achievements and problems. Hence this paper acquires its research focus, approaches and reasons. Because Calvino is such an author who cares the problems that writing faces far more than reality does, this paper tries to probe into his efforts to improve the writing form ,and the kernel that is influenced by traditional literature in this novel.The first part discusses the characteristics of meta-fiction in the novel. It begins at discussing the definitions of meta-fiction, by analyzing the characteristics of meta-fiction: self-references, parody, and the relationship among writer, protagonists and reader to observe the meta-fiction factors in If on a winter's nighta traveler.The second part analyzes the "maze" features, which is a unique narrative skill of the novel. The novel shows its maze feature through the maze means, maze personage, maze images and maze theme. It means Calvino's efforts to give a salute from modern to the remote past, and to return to the tradition.The third part discusses the factors of Italian traditional literature, inherited by If on a winter's night a traveler. It probes into the meaning of "story", the "seeking" theme, the love-pattern and the narrative skill, which come from Italian tradition of knight literature and folktales, with reference to Calvino's own Six Memos for the Next Millennium.The conclusion is: If on a winter's night a traveler is a typical text that Calvrno innovates in literary form .The novel is abundant with postmodernism skills. At the same time, it is also planted deeply in traditional Italian literature, especially the knight literature and folktales. It is the cross of the modern and the tradition that makes Calvino successful.