Et in Arcadia Ego: Gina Lagorio's L'RCADIA AMERICANA as the Reflection of a European Literary Self

Abstract

In L'arcadia americana (1999) Gina Lagorio reproposes the myth of Arcadia, in particular the “Et in Arcadia Ego” theme as the metaphor that serves her description of American university campus life and of the United States at large. Traveling through a world that he feels is impermeable to real life — university campuses in the United States — the first-person narrator of L'arcadia americana relates to American Academia as the Ego of the Arcadian tomb, a reminder of death and of historical time. Assuming the position of the outsider inside the picture, the protagonist himself remains impermeable to the landscape that he describes, so that the America we see through his eyes amounts to a reflection of his often prejudicial constructs, partly made of the dreamy America belonging to his youth, and partly of reiterated stereotypes immediately recognizable by the novel's implied reader, the Italian audience. Although he crosses the Ocean for a photographic reportage of US campuses, the narrator clings to Europe with all the cultural might he feels capable of, and thus never really leaves the Old World.