Other Words: JCU Welcomes Italian Novelist Riccardo Capoferro
On April 5, 2022, the JCU Department of English Language and Literature welcomed Italian author Riccardo Capoferro for the last event of the Other Words series, in which contemporary writers talk about their relationship with literatures in English. He discussed the influence of Daniel Defoe and the 18th century English novel on his writing, particularly on his debut novel, Oceanides (Il Saggiatore, 2021), which was the finalist with honorary mention at the Premio Italo Calvino. Capoferro is Associate Professor of English Literature at La Sapienza University in Rome, as well as the author of many academic studies on the English novel and an avid reader of Joseph Conrad. He was interviewed by JCU English Professor Alessandra Grego.
Riccardo Capoferro
Oceanides incorporates stylistic elements of the traditional adventure novel, but Capoferro believes that it is possible to write a contemporary novel with a historical character in a trans-historical environment. “The adventure is made of the place you have left, not just the place you are going to,” Professor Grego added. Capoferro said that Richard Kenton, the protagonist of the novel, is similar to an 18th century explorer, but is also a thoroughly modern character who is aware of the precariousness of the environment he is living in and the threat of extinction to it. “I did not want to downplay that often, great achievements are driven by selfishness, and that the infrastructure of the world is perpetrated by other people who are not as selfish,” he said. “Kenton tends to manipulate people and is also responsible for some environmental changes. I wanted to give the sense that a different kind of sacrifice is not heroic and there is even more dignity in that kind of life than in Kenton’s selfishness.”
Capoferro believes that you must be a reader if you want to have a writing style. “I think a writer has to read a lot, and widely,” Professor Grego agreed. Capoferro reflected that his desire to have a unique voice was instinctual. “Not every novelist wants to have a style, but if you want to sell, you must have an invisible one,” he said. “The language of a best seller is based on a very small vocabulary. In order to have a style, I have always been in conversation with other writers.”
The character of Elsie was important to Capoferro for a variety of reasons. “She can do things that were not possible for previous characters, but has her own limitations to overcome. She is a pioneer as well and is a later version of an adventurer. I wanted to suggest the existence of this analogy between her and Kenton and show that what she is trying to do comes with a cost, because the world is not fully ready to accept her as a woman. She has qualities of female scientists that I admire a lot. I also wanted to suggest how science and being exposed to experience is something that also has social implications, whereby what matters most is your ability to independently know your social roots.”
