Systems Theory Reflections on the Relationship Between Literature and Society: With a Case Study on Elio Vittorini

Abstract

This article centers on an analysis of Elio Vittorini’s novel Le donne di Messina (1949, 1964). The novel recounts a new beginning in a country destroyed by fascism and war. The story of an abandoned village that is repopulated and restored by strangers initially appears as a utopia of a society without private property. But this utopia proves fragile as, on the one hand, the former proprietors reclaim ownership and, on the other, a former fascist lives among the villagers. In addition to the story and its ideological significance, Vittorini also showcases the narrative process, resulting in reflexive refractions, ambivalences and uncertainties. The present textual analysis is framed by system-theoretical considerations on the connections between literature and society. In particular, it addresses Luhmann’s concept of symbolically generalized communication media and interprets fictionality as such a medium. Systems theory is employed heuristically to gain a perspective on Vittorini’s novel and the tensions and contradictions manifest in it between utopia and reality, between literary autonomy and political engagement. Finally, against this background, some theses on the place of literary studies in the present are developed and put forth.