La funzione-Pazienza

My dissertation ("The Pazienza-function. Andrea Pazienza's influence on the Italian graphic novel"), focuses on the impact that comics auteur Andrea Pazienza (1956-1988) has had on many aspects of contemporary Italian culture. Foucault's identification of the role of the author as a function of discourse in literary texts is especially relevant to my study, as I apply the concept of "fonction-auteur" ("author-function," Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?, 1969) to the works of Italian graphic novelists, writers, directors, and musicians, who have been inspired by Pazienza's aesthetics and poetics. To demonstrate his presence in contemporary Italian culture, I employ a combination of close image-text analysis, as well as an historical and cultural reconstruction of Pazienza's myth as an Italian countercultural icon. I argue that a "Pazienza-function" is clearly traceable and that, in view of this idea, it is possible to identify how his work has been received and understood. Pazienza's choice of subject matters, his role as a public intellectual, his precise socio-political views, joined with his critical success--enhanced by his sudden death, make him a very recognizable and malleable icon. In my dissertation, I argue that Pazienza's polygonal manner contributed to the shaping of the current and extremely productive wave of Italian graphic novels, a genre that plays a central role in socio-political debates of national and transnational relevance. The significance of the "Pazienza-function" in the Italian graphic novel has a huge cultural impact: it offers a case study for the rise of authorship in Italian comics; it provides the possibility to trace Italian comics' models and archetypes; finally, it illustrates trends in comics readership.