{"pk":40912,"title":"\"Il perché del gioco\": Chess and Medievalism in Calvino’s Le città invisibili and Lezioni americane","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This essay considers chess as a particular mode of exchange in Italo Calvino’s \nLe città invisibili \nthat draws upon the game’s global nature and long history of representing cross-cultural exchange, as seen in the 13th century world that Calvino evokes in the framing of his work as an exchange between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. This focus lends itself to both an examination of Calvino’s overarching medievalism in his late novel and a look to his self-reflection in the essay on Exactitude in his \nLezioni americane\n, where the evocation of chess in his earlier novel takes on heightened significance in Calvino’s defining of his own writerly identity. I will argue that the representation of the game is essential in analyzing not only Calvino’s thoughts on language and systems of communication and control in this late period, but also his look to the cultural other that vacillates between essentializing and the forging of global affinities.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial  4.0","short_name":"CC BY-NC 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Chess"},{"word":"Calvino"},{"word":"Marco Polo"}],"section":"II. Literature and the Dream of a Library","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4vx4d468","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Akash","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kumar","name_suffix":"","institution":"UC Berkeley","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2022-09-16T11:00:26+05:30","date_accepted":"2022-09-16T11:00:26+05:30","date_published":"2023-10-11T22:04:30+05:30","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cisj/article/40912/galley/30626/download/"}]}