PIZZA, PASTA AND MANDOLINO: STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICES AND ITALIANISM IN THE GERMAN-SPEAKING CONTEXT OF SPAGHETTI-LITERATUR

Abstract

German literature would be unthinkable without the South, without the Italian experience and its myth. Indeed, from Winckelmann to Goethe, from Thomas Mann to Hesse, the list of German-speaking writers seduced by Italian beauty is exceptionally long and they felt the need to entrust their experience to diaries and travel reports, thus giving rise to an important subgenre of travel literature. Brilli states that in the tradition of Reiseliteratur, the attempt to define a culture other than one’s own through the customs, habits and character of a person has always been for the traveller a way of offering himself and his own cultural connotations. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that a similar mechanism of identity construction by opposites can also be found in the so-called Spaghetti-Literatur, with the difference that, while travel literature positively stereotypes the natural beauty of Italy, here the focus is on negative clichés related to Italians. The unique genre of Spaghetti-Literatur was inaugurated by Jan Weiler’s 2003 novel Maria, ihm schmeckt’s nicht! – Geschichte von meiner italienischen Sippe (Maria, He Doesn’t Like It! – Stories of My Italian Family), and it includes more than thirty titles characterized by the use of stereotypes and clever comedic effects. From a literary and sociological perspective, the aim of this essay is to affirm that recourse to prejudices and stereotypes should not necessarily be interpreted negatively, as is commonly done. Instead, it can be seen as a way to exorcise the fears arising from encounters with the other. By exaggerating and expanding the set of clichés, Spaghetti-Literatur ridicules the human fear of the other.