"Such is the working of the Southern mind" : a postcolonial reading of E. M. Forster's Italian narratives

Abstract

This article discusses E.M. Forster's "Italian narratives", a literary corpus that reveals the complexity, the ambivalence, and the richness of Britain's relation to the European South. Forster's narratives present, through the interplay of their characters, a vast array of approaches and attitudes towards Italian culture. By making use of a long cultural and literary tradition that depicts Italy as the bearer of a unique constellation of counter-values perceived at the opposite spectrum of British ideals, Forster builds a series of narratives dominated by a game of revulsion and attraction towards the Italian Other, which is characterized by powerful and contradicting patterns.