Cesare Pavese’s Il campo di granturco: geographical trails

This article proposes a critical reading of the short story, Il campo di granturco [The Cornfield], by Cesare Pavese. Methodologically and epistemologically, it tries to highlight the existing consonances between literature and geography with regards to three key concepts – the border, the landscape, and the territory – that form an indissoluble connection between human beings and the world. In geography, border, landscape, and territory are regarded as key cognitive mediators within the interaction between the Self and the world. What purpose, then, does reading Pavese from a geographic perspective serve? Why do his works matter within the context of cultural geography? Pavese’s Il campo di granturco, I argue, contains an example of what Augustin Berque calls ‘Thinking through Landscape’, which is an essential requirement of any relationship between the self and the world. Additionally, reading Pavese from a geographic viewpoint provides us the chance to propose a reflection on the role of dialog in the self/world cognitive relationship. The paper’s main objective is to contribute to current geographical debates on the self-world interactions.