Abstract
Italy has exerted a special fascination for many New Zealand writers, from Maurice Shadbolt to C. K. Stead and Witi Ihimaera, epitomizing not just a geographical antipodes, but also a psychological one. An exotic and often romanticized space that comes to represent everything Aotearoa/New Zealand is not, it creates a powerful pull on the New Zealand imagination. At the same time, the experiences of New Zealanders in Italy during the Second World War and its aftermath provide a counterpoint to the rose-tinted myths of Italy as a land of unsullied loveliness and open-armed beauties. This chapter examines two contemporary novels that recount the stories of New Zealanders in Italy during and after the war in order to shed light on some of the roles that Italy has played as a symbolic space in New Zealand storytelling, both Māori and Pākehā. It focuses in particular on the transnational storytelling of Patricia Grace’s Tu and James McNeish’s My Name Is Paradiso.
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© 2013 Sarah Patricia Hill
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Hill, S.P. (2013). Transnational Storytelling: Visions of Italy in Two New Zealand Novels. In: Shaw, J., Kelly, P., Semler, L.E. (eds) Storytelling: Critical and Creative Approaches. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349958_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349958_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46820-1
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