The Italian City in Jean-Philippe Toussaint's works: center and suburb

cities or to the controversial ‘ultimate city’ by Ballard, the city, with its centre and its outskirts, taking into account the literary reality of all time, has acquired a decisive importance in the economy of the novel, renovating itself in a ‘stage place’ perceived as a space, latu sensu, of the ‘modern’ linguistic and literary geography, “hyperbole de la grande opposition dialectique culture versus nature”. As part of this evolution, the Italian city has charmed, with its unusual and unique details, several French and Francophone writers who, from Stendhal to George Sand, have hidden it in cameos which have clearly identifiable features, in works where, in Jean-Yves Tadié words, “la carte de la ville organise la narration; l’éclatement de la mégapole la multiplie, la pulvérise”. On the contrary, as this research will prove, the Italian city in the work of Jean-Philippe Toussaint is introduced to the reader in an ambiguous way: on the one hand, in the first part of his literary production it is shown a city without centre or outskirts, that is to say “sans qualités”, a “non-lieu” or “rien ne bouge” where the non-personality of the I-narrator sees is image reflected in a Lacan’s narcissistic mirror game; on the other hand, in the second part of his literary production, his outskirts, his villages make up a sort of topic place, a milestone, underlying both a narrative evolution and a sensitive change of the personality of the I-narrator.