California Italian Studies

Critical discussion of Anna Maria Ortese's controversial 1953 book on Naples, focused especially on the first story "Un paio di occhiali" and Ortese's parodoxical poetics of myopia. The article looks at the book in the context of the Neapolitan modern narrative tradition, seeking to explain its ambivalent reception by Neapolitan intellectuals, and why Italo Calvino was instead one of Ortese's earliest supporters and admirers.