SOURCE: “Fantasy, Alienation and the Racconti of Italo Calvino,” in Forum of Modern Language Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4, October, 1970, pp. 399–412.

In the following analysis of I racconti, Woodhouse shows how alienation is one of the dominant themes in Calvino's fiction.

The controversial aura which surrounds almost everything which Italo Calvino has done or written since he was awarded the Premio Riccione in 1947 for Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (Turin, Einaudi, 1947) has continued until the present day. The verdict of 1947 was controversial, and again in 1968, in the competition for the Viareggio prize, the verdict hung upon the vote of one judge. Calvino won, but he refused the prize on the grounds that its acceptance simply helped shore up an outmoded institution, the literary prize!¹ In the intervening twenty-one years, Calvino's work has always been greeted with a host of conflicting critical opinions. Perhaps no aspect of his work has...