LA CASA COME SPAZIO DEL SÉ: ANALISI DELL’AMBIENTE DOMESTICO IN DUE ROMANZI DI CHIARA PALAZZOLO

Abstract

This study intends to examine how the concept of the house, and its typical associations of warmth, safety and shelter, is challenged and disrupted in Chiara Palazzolo’s contemporary fiction. The symbolic image of the house as depicted in her novels causes the binary inside/outside, safety/danger to collapse into one another, merging the unknown and the intimate. The aim is to demonstrate how this unsetting reframing of the unknown and uncanny within the formerly safe space bears out its effects on the inner lives of the female characters. This forces a process of inner reflection in the form of a wakeup call in Palazzolo’s La casa della festa (2000) as well as a psychological grief process in I bambini sono tornati (2003).