ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the representation of the landscape, a basic compositional affinity soon becomes clear: by means of the emphasis of a single one of its elements — ants, trees and concrete respectively — the overall image of the landscape is rendered virtually unrecognizable. In these texts the author's descriptive procedure concerning the landscape is basically the same, and has the effect of modifying the pattern as a whole, through the detailed attention focused on one of its parts. Thus the landscape, which should constitute a novelty for the narrator of 'La formica argentina', is thrust into second place by swarms of almost invisible ants. Similarly, the same landscape pattern sea-city-hills becomes an almost unbroken wooded expanse in Il barone rampante and an asphalt jungle in La speculazione edilizia. This chapter looks at those works where one detail of the landscape has been repeated and diffused to the point of making the usual pattern sea-city-hills almost unrecognizable.
