If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Literary Elements

Post-modernist fiction

20th century; various locations including Switzerland, South America, and fictional countries such as Ataguitania and Ircania.

Narrative point of view is one of the most important stylistic aspects of If on a winter's night a traveler. The numbered chapters are generally written in second person narration, meaning the author addresses the reader directly. However, the reader being addressed by the author is actually a character in the story, with defining characteristics such as gender and beliefs. In addition, one numbered chapter is written as a diary using the first person. The chapters with names, such as "Outside the town of Malbork," are short stories, completely distinct from the numbered chapters. These stories are generally written with first-person narration.

Satirical, confusing, philosophical

Protagonist - The Reader; Antagonist - Ermes Marana

The Reader is kept from completing books he starts by many obstacles, most importantly the translator Ermes Marana's meddling with the worldwide network of book publication. The Reader seeks to finish the books he has begun.

The Reader visits a library that has all of the books he has begun in its catalog. However, the library does not currently have any of the books the Reader seeks. The Reader has a conversation with a number of men reading at the library and has the sudden impulse to marry Ludmilla.

The reader stating that the book he begins to read doesn't seem to be Calvino's usual style but allowing that the author "is known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next" (9) foreshadows how innovative and genre-bending the ensuing novel will be.

In the story-within-a-story "What story down there awaits its end?" the fact that the main character can make things disappear with his mind is described in an understated fashion. This stylistic choice heightens the fantastical tone of the story.

Allusions are made multiple times to Arabian Nights, also known as One Thousand and One Nights, a story in which a woman must tell a king a long story comprised of many stories-within-a-story in order to not be executed. This ancient story was clearly an influence on Calvino's writing of If on a winter's night a traveler.

Many of the stories-within-a-story utilize detailed imagery, particularly visual, smell, and sound imagery. The imagery used in the first paragraphs of each story-within-a-story help set them apart from the frame story and from one another.

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The narrators throughout the stories-within-a-story parallel the reader, who is the main character of the frame story. They are all men, many are paranoid and/or obsessive, and objectify female characters. The female characters in these stories-within-a-story also parallel one another and parallel Ludmilla, the reader's love interest in the frame story. These female characters are generally presented as beautiful and mysterious.

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"...be careful that the light cast on [the book] isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday." (4)