Last people on Earth
First surveys and biblical subtexts of a tòpos in contemporary Italian fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10520Keywords:
Last man, post-apocalyptic narrative, Bible and literature, contemporary Italian literature, post-secular societyAbstract
The article is a preliminary investigation of a tòpos recurring through post-apocalyptic fiction in the last two centuries: the stories of the last people on Earth (the so-called “Last man”). After sketching a history of the origins of such a narrative subject in 19th-century French and English literature (Grainville, Byron, Shelley) and mentioning the modernist/postmodernist reprises of the “Last people” writings in the 20th century, the essay focuses on three books on the subject in contemporary Italian literature: Davide Longo’s L’uomo verticale (2010); Alessandro Bertante’s Nina dei lupi (2011); Niccolò Ammaniti’s Anna (2015). The second section provides an individuation of Biblical subtexts, post-apocalyptic echoes, social and ecological ideologies underlying these stories. Despite appearing as dystopian fictions, they aim to reconsider, via science-fictional stylization, the present ways of life, as well as they represent a test subject for ethics.
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