Andrea Camilleri’s Imaginary Vigàta: Between Formula and Innovation

Pezzotti, Barbara

doi:10.1057/9781137483690_15

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…in Cicioni and Di Ciolla 2008, 11). The preferential location for his stories is Vigata, a big city in the province of Montelusa: both are fictitious names for the author's hometown, Porto Empedocle, and the province of Agrigento respectively (Pezzotti, 2015). Other toponyms are also altered in the novels, including the island of Lampedusa, renamed Sampedusa.…”

Section: Camilleri and Montalbano's Sicilymentioning

confidence: 99%

Place matters: geographical context, place belonging and the production of locality in Mediterranean Noirs

Gabellieri

2021

GeoJournal

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Scholars have been investigating detective stories and crime fiction mostly as literary works reflecting the societies that produced them and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. However, these genres have generally been neglected by literary geographers. In the attempt to fill such an epistemological vacuum, this paper examines and compare the function and importance of geography in both classic and late 20th century detective stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s detective stories are compared to Mediterranean noir books by Manuel Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri and Jean Claude Izzo. While space is shown to be at the center of the investigations in the former two authors, the latter rather focus on place, that is space invested by the authors with meaning and feelings of identity and belonging. From this perspective, the article argues that detective investigations have become a narrative medium allowing the readership to explore the writer’s representation/construction of his own territorial context, or place-setting, which functions as a co-protagonist of the novel. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the emerging role of place in some of the later popular crime fiction can be interpreted as the result of writer’s sentiment of belonging and, according to Appadurai’s theory, as a literary and geographical discourse aimed at the production of locality.

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Section: Camilleri and Montalbano's Sicilymentioning

confidence: 99%