Un ventre di donna: romanzo chirurgico. A co-authored novel in Italian Futurism

Abstract

This essay focuses on 20th-century Italian co-authored literature. I define coauthored literature as a literary practice that entails the active and conscious co-operation of two or more authors. This approach leads to an innovative, argumentative and unpredictable interpenetration (compensation), which is the result of the various authorial contributions. In the first part of the essay, I will analyze the ways in which co-authored writing practice affects the authors' choice of genre. In order to effectively investigate this issue, I survey a set of literary works published by two or more authors in Western context from 1700 to 2013. This quantitative research led me to highlight some significant recurrent characteristics. In the second part, I will focus my attention on a co-authored novel in Italian Futurism entitled Un ventre di donna: romanzo chirurgico, who can help me underline the relationship between the concept of multi-authorship and Modernity.