Irony and its discontents : the writing of history in the works of Umberto Eco, Carlo Ginzburg, and Wu Ming

This thesis investigates the multiplicity of the definitions of irony in Italian culture (1980s-present), and their significant dependence on ideological positions on history, history as a literary object, and literary history. This study follows two interlinked threads. First, it focuses on the use and analysis of irony in the theory and historical novels of Umberto Eco and Wu Ming. Secondly, it reconstructs the development of an Italian mode of writing about history, bringing to the fore its connection with Carlo Ginzburg's historiography. The first aim of this thesis is to assess the politicisation of irony in recent and current cultural debates, as well as to determine what the implications that diverging positions on irony are for Eco's and Wu Ming's historical narrative. The second aim is to evaluate the political and aesthetic effects of a series of reciprocal influences between historiography and literature on contemporary Italian fiction. The first chapter outlines key terms for the subject, such as the history of irony, postmodern irony, and the centrality of irony within the current Italian literary debate. The second chapter considers Eco's theory and historical fictions; in particular, it highlights the political incisiveness of Eco's novels and use of irony in relation to intertextuality. The third chapter compares Eco's and Ginzburg's ideas about the conjectural paradigm and the question of myth, and also examines the literary influence of Ginzburg's historiography. The fourth chapter reads Wu Ming's historical novels as examples of an allegorising mode of writing about history; in particular, it discusses Ginzburg's legacy in the novel Q, Wu Ming's rejection of irony, and their affinity to a leftist melancholic tradition. Through its analysis, the thesis both challenges the idea of irony as synonymous of disengagement, and critically assesses the transmigration of epistemological ambitions from historiography to literature.