NK Essay

Italo Calvino was an Italian author who wrote a wide variety of stories, such as The Nonexistent Knight and many more. He was a master of postmodern literature which can be seen throughout all his stories, including The Nonexistent Knight. This novella follows Agilulf, a “perfect” yet nonexistent knight, and his acquaintances on quests to seek out their true identity and reveals to us that “where other people exist genuine individuality is never possible.” Through Calvino’s perspective, the perfect individual cannot exist in a world where there is greed, gluttony, lust, and other inimical qualities around him, which ultimately led Agilulf to his doom. Characters in the story cannot achieve that “perfect individuality” that everyone desires, simply because perfection is unattainable, which is depicted through Calvino’s use of satire and postmodern elements. In The Nonexistent Knight, Italo Calvino creates a parodic satire on medieval romances where genuine individuality is not possible, making us question the verisimilitude of the characters in the story through the use of different types of satire, character development, and postmodern themes.

Calvino employs different forms of satire and irony to reveal the imperfections of individuals and manifest the foolishness of imperfect beings. In the story, a translator in the war accidentally states that “the Argalif Isohar is on the hillock to the right” while the man Raimbaut was about kill was “the Argalif Abdul” (39). Calvino is mocking the value of human lives during war and the foolishness of war, as a translator’s mistake could have been the demise of a innocent Argalif. This absurd mistake shows us how the life of any human can be affected by anyone, which deters true indiv...

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...iduality through the use of foils such as Gurduloo and the idea of nonexistence.

In conclusion, Italo Calvino creates a satirical story that mocks the chivalrous tales of knights. He uses satire and irony to show the imperfections of people the causes of the deterioration of individuality. Calvino also develops characters, such as Agilulf, to show how even the most perfect of people have certain imperfections which make them similar to others of society. Calvino also utilizes postmodernism and makes characters question their existence, which causes paradoxes and the loss of self-awareness. To conclude, The Nonexistent Knight depicts the struggles of being nonexistent and existent as well, through the use of postmodernism, character development, and various types of satire which ultimately shows that where other people exist, genuine individuality is never possible.