Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pan-Meridional Italianness

Despite his ‘Third World’ and Marxist sympathies, Pier Paolo Pasolini showed, throughout his life, strong poetic and political attention for national narratives and the building of Italianness. However, Pasolini’s ‘desperate love’ for Italy and Italianness – which I consider one of the basic elements of his poetic universe – can be fully grasped only if we read it in the light of his fluid, transnational, and pan-meridional approach.