THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE UTOPIA: ABOUT THE CITY
THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE UTOPIA: ABOUT THE CITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on several manners of constructing a utopian city, or, in extenso, a utopian urban mentality. The ground on which our pursuit is leaning on is the literary world, in which this idea of construction is represented, initially developed in Thomas More’s writings. From the multiple depictions of modern utopia, we shall analyse two examples of using the utopic discourse in relation with identity-building process. On one hand, Claudio Magris’ Trieste can be considered a literary utopic construct of a city, pushed in the past and, of course, an inside utopia, that wants to capture the fragrance from the multicultural melting pot of the beginning of the 20th century and using it to give an identity to the present Trieste. On the other hand, the German-written migrant literature tries to describe the construction by the migrants of an outside utopia, pushed in the future, therefore choosing not to build one at home. Eventually, as all utopias are born to fail, we will see how fictionalising the city can save, in literature, the struggle to find an identity.

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