The construction of gender, sexuality and desire in Italo Calvino's works

Many feminists argue that postmodernism is gender blind and that the deconstruction of meta-narratives by postmodemism does not extend to the gender roles. In order to test that statement this dissertation will examine four texts written by the lauded postmodernist novelist, ltalo Calvina. The major focus will be on the construction of gender, sexuality and desire within a selection of Calvina's texts covering a thirty year time span. The texts were chosen arbitrarily commencing with one of Calvino's early texts, Difficult loves, which is a classic realist text. The next Baron in the trees is the middle novella of Our Ancestors, and is representative of the fantastic/fairy story genre. The final two texts Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveller, move into the modernist/postmodernist forms. An examination of the postmodernist/feminist debate will be undertaken in order to provide a methodology. This debate reveals the differences between these two radical groups and the critique of postmodernism by feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Patricia Waugh and others will serve as a framework by which to examine the texts. The focus of this dissertation, while engaging with postmodern concerns, will be on the lack of contestation of the gender roles within Calvina's works. While it can be argued that his texts progressively point to the construction of knowledge and meaning; the displacement of subject positions and the instability of narrative authority, there is no similar problematization of female subjectivity, sexuality and desire as these have been traditionally constructed within patriarchy. Calvino, like many postmodem writers, does not contest gender roles or when he does, it is superficial and from a masculinist point of view.