Pasolini: The Sacred Flesh (Toronto Italian Studies) - Hardcover

Stefania Benini

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1442648066 ISBN 13: 9781442648067

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2015

Synopsis

Poet, novelist, dramatist, polemicist, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini continues to be one of the most influential intellectuals of post-war Italy. In Pasolini: The Sacred Flesh, Stefania Benini examines his corporeal vision of the sacred, focusing on his immanent interpretation of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the "sacred flesh" of Christ in both Passion and Death as the subproletarian flesh of the outcast at the margins of capitalism. By investigating the many crucifixions within Pasolini's poems, novels, films, cinematic scripts and treatments, as well as his subversive hagiographies of criminal or crazed saints, Benini illuminates the radical politics embedded within Pasolini's adoption of Christian themes. Drawing on the work of theorists such as Ernesto De Martino, Mircea Eliade, Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Zizek, she shows how Pasolini's meditation on the disappearance of the sacred in our times and its return as a haunting revenant, a threatening disruption of capitalist society, foreshadows current debates on the status of the sacred in our postmodern world.

About this title

Review:

'This is a thorough study of the true intellectual Pasolini.'

- Choice Magazine vol 53:09:2016

'Benini's book is a tour de force to be lauded and a must read for any Pasolini scholar.'

- Daniela Bini - Annali D'Italianistica vol 35:2016

"For those familiar with the film criticism on Pasolini, Sacred Flesh makes a major contribution to an understanding of the artist's thought and intentions in making these films. It is a contribution that arises from highly developed Italian research and debates."

- Bart Testa - University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 86, n. 3, Summer 2017

'Benini succeeds in carving out an innovative space for interpretation, so that her work is an interesting addition to the huge bulk of Pasolini criticism.'

- Carla Locatelli - Forum Italicum, vol 51:03:2017

About the Author:

Stefania Benini is the 2014-15 Lauro De Bosis Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1442648066
• ISBN 13: 9781442648067
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336