New Italian Weird? Definizioni della letteratura italiana del soprannaturale nel nuovo millennio

In the 1980s, after the publication of Tzvetan Todorov's influential essay on the fantastic, scholars started to discuss and rethink Italian literary tradition using this critical concept. Critics and writers involved in this debate (such as Italo Calvino and Gianfranco Contini), however, limited the concept of the fantastic to highbrow, intellectual fiction, disregarding popular literature and contaminations of different media. In recent years, Italian authors have shown a renewed interest in supernatural fiction, drawing inspiration from both the Anglo-American tradition of weird fiction and the New Weird literary movement. By analysing the work and the theoretical reflections of contemporary Italian authors of weird fiction, this article explores this new wave of Italian literature while highlighting the enduring influence of the fantastic on this new genre.