Denial Of "Capture":A Study Of Calvino’s Novel Criticism

Italo Calvino is a famous Italian novelist,literary editor and literary critic with unique characteristics.His love for literature and his passion for editing made Calvino contact with classical works extensively and practice criticism actively.On this basis,he formed a unique view of literary criticism.Calvino’s critical view of novels mainly involves three dimensions: text,author and reader,which reflect his pursuit of pluralism and openness.He likes diversified novels and advocates that novels should reflect the tendency of encyclopedia in the form of crystal.This view of text highlights the cognitive status of novels and expands the connotation of this literary genre.At the same time,Calvino also made a critical discussion on the status and role of authors and readers.The diversified content and form of novels make Calvino attach great importance to the intellectual infusion of writers.He opposes dictatorial authors and believes that the public image and personal character of authors should be retired and give way to readers with critical consciousness,because readers are the key to the interpretation of texts.His ideal readers should reject the “capture” of writers and literary traditions.Have their own judgment.In response to the intellectual infusion of the author,the reader should pursue a higher cultivation than the author,because only in this way,the dialogue between the reader and the author and the text will not evolve into a discourse hegemony of one party.Authors and readers not only maintain the relationship of cooperation and communication,but also have their own psychology of competition.In the case of full tension,literature can promote its market.Calvino’s concept of fiction criticism guides his practice of criticism.Corresponding to his multi-dimensional concept of criticism,Calvino pays special attention to the exploration of the way of reading text,the status of readers’ reading and the author’s creative idea in his novel criticism.In line with his multifaceted view of text,Calvino proposes that readers should peel the layers of a novel like an artichoke.He opposed the practice of reading novel texts in isolation and paid much attention to the intertextuality of novel texts.From the perspective of literary consultant and publishing house editor,he proposed that “translation is the best way to read”.Calvino pays particular attention to the reading state of the reader.He believes that the crystal nature of the novel puts forward cognitive requirements for the reader,while the setting of the maze structure is for the reader to find a way out of it.At the same time,Calvino is interested in the postponement of the narrative,which he sees as a way of making the reader more engaged and less marginalized.In order to solve the problem of how to deal with the author in creation,Calvino gives his own answer from the two dimensions of decomposition and expansion in practice.He believes that the writer should be divided,and there is no unified figure to control the generation of the meaning of the text and readers’ reading of the text.At the same time,the author should make use of the intertextuality of literature to moderately carry out “art theft” in the creation.A great novelist should even have the cosmic consciousness of embracing everything and give shape to the universe in his novels.Milan Kundera and Calvino,as contemporaneous novelists and critics,had similar life experience and creative experience.They also pay attention to the relationship between the novel and politics and philosophy,try to achieve the balance between fast and slow narrative pace,and pay attention to the ambiguity and precision of the theme of the novel.Compared with Kundera,Calvino can discuss the aesthetic characteristics of novels more dialectically from both positive and negative perspectives.Influenced by various literary trends of thought at that time,he can also consciously use a variety of ways of criticism in his critical practice.Calvino also draws nourishment from Italian folk fairy tales,paying special attention to the influence of rapid narrative speed and sharp visual images on the creation of novels.As the main front of the Renaissance,Italy had made great achievements in the fields of science,technology and literature and art.Under this cultural background,Calvino paid more attention to the connection between literature and science in concrete practice,and had a very detailed grasp of the language application and structure setting of novels.The combination of fairy tale thinking and scientific thinking has brought a kind of harmony across disciplinary boundaries to Calvino’s novel criticism.The attention to nature and the universe has greatly expanded Calvino’s critical vision and realized the transcendence of anthropocentrism.