"Una metamorfosi straordinaria": emotional epistemologies in "Lo scialle andaluso" and La Storia

The works of Elsa Morante make a key contribution to the emotional landscape of modern Italian literature by means of a textual world disclosed through how young characters are “affected.” This comparative reading of “Lo scialle andaluso” (1963) and La Storia (1974) uses theories of affect to argue that Morante’s writing can be read for how it represents the manifold ways in which bodies are moved, positively or negatively, to inhabit the world, demonstrating the potential for literature to depict those movements and their consequences. The article first shows how children’s emotions enact a kind of “metamorfosi straordinaria” (“Lo scialle andaluso” 143) and expose, variously, the trap of suffocating relational dynamics and the wider socio-historical forces which justify violence against the vulnerable. It then explores an extra-diegetic transformation which must take place if we are to believe in a “mondo salvato dai ragazzini” where emotional experiences hold transformative potential.