L'inventario di un universo. Antropologia e letteratura in Corrado Alvaro

Some of Corrado Alvaro's works, especially those regarding Calabria, are often evaluated not only for their literary value, but also for their documentary value. The article summarizes some points of the post-modern debate on ethnographic writing and moves in that area of compatibility which anthropologists and literary critics converse. The different contrasts that seem to constantly characterize Alvaro's works - country/world, metahistory/history, magical realism/realism - once composed and read in their entirety, reveal a specific structure which is implied in most of his literature. The landscape, in particular, is the element that makes everything coherent, and allows us to understand some specific dynamics of Alvaro's memory.