Interpreting
Italo Calvino’s
“The Man Who Shouted Teresa”
Today, there are many
different forms of literary criticism. These include traditional approaches
such as historical-biographical and moral-philosophical criticism; Aristotelian
criticism; genre criticism; rhetoric, linguistics and stylistics; and source study.
Some newer approaches to literary criticism are formalism (New Criticism);
psychological criticism; mythological and archetypal criticism; and the history
of ideas. Most current critics focus on approaches such as feminist criticism;
cultural studies; Marxist criticism; structuralism and post structuralism;
dialogics; phenomenological criticism; and reader-response criticism. Even with
these many different forms of criticism, it is still difficult to analyze the
short stories of Italo Calvino, especially “The Man Who Shouted Teresa” because
they do not easily lend themselves to any particular approach. This is made
apparent when “The Man Who Shouted Teresa” is analyzed using three of the most
prominent forms of literary criticism: feminist criticism, formalist criticism,
and reader-response criticism, since they all seem to miss the basic point of
the story.
Feminist literary critics are concerned with how “gender assumptions… about
women operate in the reading and writing of literary texts” (Moon 57). They are
also interested in the balances of power in a society: “Feminist literary
critics try to explain how power imbalances due to gender in a given culture
are reflected in or challenged by literary texts” (Guerin 196). Currently, the
focus of feminist critics tends to be on reading texts written by women,
especially women who have been neglected in the past, such as women from
different cultures.
If a feminist critic were to study “The Man Who Shouted Teresa,” this critic
would be very interested in the portrayal of the woman Teresa. Teresa never
appears, but she is a fundamental part of the story. Teresa is portrayed as a
person who can be shouted at. None of the people who shout “Teresa” seem to
think it strange to shout a woman’s name at the top of their lungs. They assume
they are shouting at her because the man lives with her and needs to get into
their apartment. A feminist critic would wonder how the story would change if
the man began yelling “Alberto.” They might also suggest that the story shows
men’s power over women and society—they can shout a woman’s name and people
will join them.
Many formalist literary critics are also known as New Critics. They believe
that the meaning of literary texts does not come from either the author or the
historical background of the text, but rather from the text itself. These
critics closely study texts, examining each word and the structure carefully to
determine the meaning of the story. They are concerned with form, organic form,
texture, image, symbol, point of view, the speaker’s voice, tension, irony, and
paradox (Guerin 83-90).
When formalistic or New Critical scholars study “The Man Who Shouted Teresa,”
they would probably fall into one of two camps. They would either place so much
importance on the text that they would want to read it in Italian, which is
difficult for most American readers, or they would not care that the text is
translated because any text holds the meaning of the story. If the critics
belonged to the second camp, then they would closely examine every word in the
story to find hidden meanings or subtle word plays. In the second sentence of
“The Man Who Shouted Teresa,” the narrator says that “My shadow took fright at
the moon and huddled between my feet” (Calvino 7). This is an interesting
metaphor which makes no sense. It seems to suggest that the story is set at
night, when the moon is visible, yet the group of people seem to be shouting
for a long period of time, which would be difficult to do at night. So, if this
metaphor does not have anything to do with the time of day, then what does it
mean? A formalist critic would search to discover the meaning of this and other
phrases in the text.
Reader-response criticism is perhaps the easiest form of literary criticism to
put into practice. It is entirely based on the individual reader and this
reader’s response to a literary text. Reader-response critics believe that a
text does not exist until someone reads it, so they analyze characteristics of
the text which cause a reader to respond to them.
A reader-response critic would look for elements in “The Man Who Shouted
Teresa” which cause a reader to respond in some way, or to expect a certain
ending to the story. The story starts with the man shouting “Teresa.” This
raises the question, “Why is a man shouting ‘Teresa’?” Readers expect the story
to answer this question. As the crowd begins shouting “Teresa,” the reader
begins to wonder if Teresa will ever answer. If not, then why? Is she sick?
Dead? Or just not home? As the story progresses, the reader discovers that
Teresa does not even exist. This gives them a bit of a letdown—they have been
expecting a response from her to the shouting, and one never comes. The reader
also never gets a reason for why the man began shouting “Teresa” to begin with,
so they are left with an ending completely different from what they were
expecting.
After analyzing “The Man Who Shouted Teresa” using these three methods of
criticism, one thing becomes obvious—they all leave something to be desired in analyzing
“The Man Who Shouted Teresa.” After researching Calvino, his writing style, and
reading the text closely, it becomes apparent that “The Man Who Shouted Teresa”
is really about meaninglessness. In life, it does not really matter what you do
or where you do it. “As far as I’m concerned…we can call another name, or try
somewhere else. It’s no big deal” (Calvino 8). The narrator does not really
care whether he is shouting “Teresa” or jumping up and down. Both are
meaningless activities and can be done anytime, anywhere by anyone, because
none of these things matter.
The story also reveals in other ways that many of the things we do and the
skills we perfect are meaningless. Even after the narrator makes it known that
he has no reason for shouting “Teresa,” and everyone leaves, someone stays on
to shout “Teresa”—“someone stubborn” (Calvino 8). This person is doing
something meaningless—shouting at a non-existent person, but yet they continue
to do so indefinitely. Of course, the entire crowd had perfected a meaningless
skill. They had worked out exactly how to shout “Teresa”, but this skill is of
no use. Teresa does not even exist, so the entire world could shout “Teresa” in
3,000 different ways, but they would all be to no avail.
These insights into the theme of the story—the meaninglessness of life—could
have perhaps come from a formalist critic, but not from a feminist critic, and
probably not from a reader-response critic either. This is because Italo
Calvino is one of the great authors of the 20th century, and a “great Italian
fabulist” (Bloom 62). His “reputation as one of Italy’s major twentieth-century
writers continues to grow” (Di Pace-Jordan). Calvino’s “work engages in a
creative dialogue with contemporary aesthetic, philosophical, and even scientific
thought” (Re 1). The short story “The Man Who Shouted Teresa” comes from his
book Numbers in the Dark, which is “an interesting, random collection of tales”
(Markey 24-25). Because Calvino’s writing is so unique, it makes it difficult
to analyze using major literary methods. Sometimes, insights from a story only
come from a close reading of the text such as a formalist would do, with some
insights into the author’s life and historical background, and a little bit of
common sense.
