Creativity Seminar Spring 2015

Writing II Italo Calvino

Read: Stokes - Chapter 3: Calvino and Kundera

Calvino handouts, Invisible Cities
Outline/write for discussion:
A. From Fantasy, Uses of Literature
1. What are Calvinos source constraints?
2. What is his goal constraint?
(initial and goal state with criteria)
3. His subject constraints?
4. His task constraints?
B. From Invisible Cities
1. What is the extraordinary event in the novel?
2. What is the central visual image?
3. How does Calvino splinter this image?
(cite categories defined by specific kinds of imagery)
4. How do the splinters cohere into the central image?
(describe the network that connects the categories and so structures
the novel; use quotations)
5. How does Calvino use patterning in the novel?
(more than one way; use diagrams and quotations to illustrate)
6. How does his structure differ from the traditional novel?
7. What is the real subject of the novel?
(use quotations to answer this)

C. Rewrite your memoir in Byatts style.