Il grande angolo (1966): on Giulia Niccolai’s Angular Writing

Abstract

This paper offers a bifocal reading of Il grande angolo (1966), Giulia Niccolai’s debut (anti)novel, written at a time when she was on the verge of abandoning her “first profession” as a photographer. The autothanatobiographical dimension of a novel centered on the young photojournalist Ita is unmistakable, as it immediately assumes a posthumous, even funereal quality – one that Barthes already attributed to photography as such. Yet the photographic does not remain confined to a merely thematic surface; rather, it fundamentally shapes the entire perceptual experience through and within the novel. At the same time, and without denying their significance, this study seeks to distance itself from recent analyses of the novelentirely focused on tracing the role of the photographic in the process of narrative writing. My second focal point, in fact, is to shed light (or navigate the shadows) on the ways in which the very technology of writing – both at the intra- and macrotextual levels and more explicitly at the diegetic level, where Ita is persistently framed in actions related to writing – likewise intervenes in the angular and punctiform epistemology of Il grande angolo. Pending further investigation, it is precisely a closer textual analysis that may help destabilize a certain critical axiom –never truly been questioned even bythe numerous recent studies – that takes for granted Il grande angolo’s proximity to the new narrative of the so-called école du regard.