The family novel. Intergenerational novels, family memoirs, changing society in changing fiction forms. New approaches to the family novel in European and American Literature from 1950 to 2010 (FamiLit) - STAR 2014_Linea 1

The aim of this project is to investigate the characteristics and the main developments of the family novel from 1950 to 2010 in European and American literature. The background hypothesis is that it is possible to distinguish the family novel not only on the basis of its content (the history of a real or fictional family) but also on the basis of its form (internal structure, point of view from which the history is narrated, functions of the characters). Specific attention will be paid to family memoirs. To date there is no theoretical model about this hybrid form between autobiographical writing and family novel. The research aims, first of all, to fill this gap. The second starting hypothesis is that the deep structural changes that the family has seen in the last few decades have also had an impact on the way in which families are represented in literature: new forms of fiction are elaborated, in which to narrate family history. We aim to supply a new theoretical model for the study of the family novel, by focusing our attention on five specific topics: Great-History and micro-stories; the historical sources (memory and archives); the dinner scene and the argumentative strategies of the family at mealtime; the representation of post-bourgeois families in post-modernist forms; family novel and ethnic minorities (Jewish family novel and migrant writers). The project will use research methods belonging to literary criticism and comparative literature. We aim to combine a historical-literary analysis with the study of the morphology and genres, and the traditional methods of close reading with the recent challenges offered by the wider horizon of distant reading. In an interdisciplinary view, and according to the competences of the different team members, we will consider also some specific investigation tools that other humanities adopt in the study of the family, and we will test their applicability to the study of the representations of the family in literature.