The paper proposes a thematic reading of Aldo Palazzeschi’s L’incendiario (1910) in light of two crucial paradigms of modernity: the figure of the prostitute, as Walter Benjamin depicts it in The Arcade Project, and the theory of eroticism formulated by Bataille in his L’erotisme (1930).

In the first part of my paper, I spell out a detailed reading of those poems that depict the reality of prostitution in L’incendiario, while also drawing textual comparisons with works by Charles Baudelaire, Guido Gozzano, and Gian Pietro Lucini that deal with the same topic.

In the second section, I adopt Bataille’s paradigm in order to frame the voyeuristic construct displayed in the early works by Palazzeschi (cf. Saccone 1987). From a linguistic and narrative standpoint, prostitution corresponds to a new kind of pornographic gaze, dissecting bodies in a series of unrelated fetishes. Palazzeschi’s graphic description of naked aging bodies can therefore be considered as a full-fledged act of pornography. At the same time, this new gaze violates fundamental interdicts such as the distinction between the human and the animal, the taboo of incest or the taboo of necrophilia. This results in a generalized regime of obscenity, revealed in a subversive coincidence of the opposites: the virginal prostitute and the bigoted old woman, the dead and the living, the human and the animal merge and overlap, bound by the laws of the same desire. The orgiastic laughter provoked by this grotesque imagery fully resonates with a deep and radical transgression of societal boundaries, far from the consolatory and infantilizing reading of Palazzeschi’s best-known divertissements.

The present article analyzes the use of Chinese icons as a frame for representing Naples in two recent non-fiction novels, "La dismissione" (2002) by Ermanno Rea and "Gomorra" (2006) by Roberto Saviano. Avoiding the pitfalls of identification (as it was trivialized in the 1970s by the political slogan “La Cina è vicina”), the space between China and Naples becomes a geographic metaphor for the many transformations re-shaping the reality of global trade.

On the one hand, the reference to China endows Naples with the typical features of post-modern space consumption (Urry 2002), be it in the form of an increasingly immaterial trade or in the more traditional form of tourism. On the other hand, the advent of Chinese firms is at odds with the crisis of steel industry in Naples. Rea describes the whole industrialization of Southern Italy as a fragile utopia, whose failure involves both political and criminal responsibilities: on the contrary, present-day China seems to accomplish the historical processes missed by Naples. However, while the Neapolitan-based heavy industry collapses, the criminal economy of camorra appears to be perfectly “wired” and “on-the-spot”, being connected to the Chinese garment industry and to the global counterfeit market, as both authors highlight in their accounts.

By no means an original invention, this spatial metaphor lays its roots in the travel journals from Communist China, such as Franco Fortini's "Asia Maggiore" [“Asia Maior”] (1956) and Carlo Bernari's "Il gigante Cina" [“China, the giant”] (1957), two examples of what Paul Hollander has named “political pilgrimages”(1992). Through this metaphor, Fortini emphasizes the misery still affecting both lands in the 1950s, whereas according to Bernari the Chinese “Land of Approximation” is strikingly similar to Naples, a city where power always depends on a series of negotiations. Despite the many continuities with the present, the meaning of this icon is totally reverted in the works by Rea and Saviano, where China embodies a rampant economic power and its morally questionable rules. Finally, the use of this spatial reference represents an implicit statement of “foreignness” and exoticism, since an Orientalist pattern is adopted to place the inner otherness of Naples within the boundaries of a blurred national identity.

In March 2008 Wu Ming 1 (nom de plume of Roberto Bui) had singled out a large number of works published between 1993-2008. He suggested that they constituted a New Italian Epic. The memorandum first appeared on the web and it immediately stirred a lively debate. The print edition (Einaudi, 2009) has brought further attention and criticism to this work. Our article deals with both the controversy surrounding this text and the overarching theory put forth in Wu Ming 1's essay. We offer a theoretical approach that readers might find helpful if they are attempting to understand current trends in Italian literature. In particular, we tackle the question of "realism," and the neo-epic contours of Italia De Profundis (by Giuseppe Genna) and Gomorra (by Roberto Saviano).