ABSTRACT
While the maternal presence and the prominence of matricide in Carlo Emilio Gadda's works has come under some critical scrutiny in recent years, this chapter focus on the narrative spaces around which the maternal trope and the emerging notion of selfhood are construed. Gonzalo simultaneously pursues and seeks to sever the bond that ties him to his mother in La cognizione. The collapse of the fundamental distinction heralds the desire to re-establish the experience of uterine bliss, a process that is hindered by the individual's confrontation with both language and the mother as continuous reminders of his post-conceptual state in the symbolic order. Fragmentation and dehiscence constitute two of the chief organizing principles of Samuel Beckett's work, resulting in the progressive collapse of form and identity. In its violent effect on both the subject and the text, the trope of maternity constitutes a further expression of the subversive thrust of the two authors' writings.
