copyism

If Columbus is Quixote's reverse, Miller is his first step forwards: a movement on into the language of copyism, and argument by assemblage ...

For Peterson, each of these writers inhabits a contested space, either geographically or ideologically, where social marginality provides the impetus for transformation on the ethical plane and brings about a rupture with copyism. This is evident in Svevo's Corto viaggio sentimentale, in which an "embrace of benevolence" (214) leads to "the prospect of a self-knowledge and the acquisition [...] of a positive morality" (217); in Morselli, who was never a "copyist" but through all of his work, both essays and fiction, contested literary and intellectual conventions; and in the anti-ideological Pratolini, who is studied here for his use of Dante's Purgatorio as a calque for his novel, Il quartiere.