MLR, 99.2, 2004 513 therefore, is reading Pasolini against himself, to trace the ways in which his work engages subtly and critically with the dominant modes of political and philosophi? cal thought of his day. The argument for coherence also has a 'biographical-critical' strand, in that an important part of Vighi's energies goes into showringthat the muchtouted points of profound fracture in Pasolini's career?first the move from Friuli to Rome, following expulsion from the Communist Party (PCI) and prosecution for molesting minors in 1949-50; and then the move into film-making in 1959-60?mask strong continuities in his concerns and his tactics for addressing them. What is the nature of Pasolini's 'strong', coherent project according to Vighi? It lies in Pasolini's persistent attempts to import 'irrationality' as an epistemological-cumideological category into discursive, rational systems (including both Marxist and 'bourgeois' rationalism). The vessels of the irrational in Pasolini are seen in figures of the sacred or the mythical. More broadly still, the reconciliation of the irrational to the rational is part of a larger ambition for Pasolini, labelled 'utopian' by Vighi (with echoes of Adorno), in which subject and object, culture and nature, 'coscienza' and 'esistenza' are imagined as one. At each of the stages of his diverse career, he is seen as adapting his medium and his voice to that utopian end. The process is seen by Vighi as working in differentways. In the period during or shortly afterPasolini's years at the University of Bologna, the project is underpinned by his readings in phi? losophy, in particular in pre-Hegelian German idealism, strands of 'decadentismo' and existentialism, and from these derive his capacity to distance himself from dom? inant contemporaries such as Croce and Gramsci. A working use of the irrational is developed in these crucial formative years, which is adapted but not abandoned in the more openly engaged, political, 'rational' work of later years. At other times, the philosophical telos is seen as implicit, as not fully grasped by Pasolini himself in con? ceptual terms, but rather intuited in a poetics, in aesthetic form,or in stylistic analysis. The book is an impressive feat of argumentation, making an original and genuinely distinctive contribution to the large critical field of work on Pasolini. It leaves certain questions open: the significance oiL'usignolo della chiesa cattolica (1958) forPasolini's 'utopianism' in the earlier period; the evolution of his later career (Vighi unnecessarily argues that nothing especially new came of the work of the 1960s and 1970s: p. 10 n. 4); the precise nature of the link to Adorno's notion of 'utopia'. But these are, relatively speaking, quibbles. The orthodoxies of Pasolini criticism will no doubt prove hard to shift, but this book is an admirable attempt at a useful revisionism. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Robert Gordon Monsters in theltalian Literary Imagination. Ed. by Keala Jewell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 2001. 325 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-8143-2838-5. In the introduction the editor presents background to the study of monsters as so? cial organization of knowledge. Starting with the work of French science historian Georges Canguilhem, she presents his distinction of 'monstrous' as belonging to the domain of childish fantasy and myth, and 'monstrosity' as a legitimate subject of scientific enquiry, relevant to natural laws. She explains, 'In this collection, monsters are broadly understood as part of a web of beliefs anchored in the epistemological constructs of various historical periods. [. . .] When we explain them, we produce the knowledge that orders our worlds' (p. 11). She gives various historical reasons why the study of monsters is relevant to ltalian literature, including an explanation of how the thought of certain ltalian scholars can be traced back, through apostolic succession, to Canguilhem. The fifteen essays in this collection are divided into four sections. The first, 'Modern Horrors', subsumes essays that analyse, through the image of monsters 514 Reviews in literary and cinematic texts, the instability of the modern world-view, the crisis of humanism, and male hegemony. The opening essay by the editor explores how Alberto Savinio (Andrea De Chirico) retells the tale of Eros and Psyche (both de...