SOURCE: Roscioni, Gian Carlo. “Gadda as Humorist.” In Carlo Emilio Gadda: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Manuela Bertone and Robert S. Dombroski, pp. 11-24. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Roscioni discusses the relationship of Gadda's humor to that of English author Lawrence Sterne and his disciples.

In reference to what is, broadly speaking, the ‘macaronic’ matrix of Gadda's literary style, Gianfranco Contini specifies repeatedly that such a label does not allude to a documentable lineage. Folengo and Rabelais, he states, ‘are obviously not Gadda's “sources,” but rather colleagues of high stature [engaged] in a formal practice that could be defined as expressionistic mannerism,’ and he goes on to say that Gadda ‘owes nothing to Dossi and his descendants […]; he belongs naturally to the line of benefactors that includes Folengo, Rabelais and the later Joyce’ (Contini 1989, 82, 86, emphasis mine). In a word, Contini is referring to...