Corto senza Pratt: un nuovo e algido inizio della poetica dello straniero per un classico del ‘900 =Corto without Pratt: a new and algid beginning framed by the stranger’s poetics for a 20th Century classic

Abstract

Corto without Pratt: a new and algid beginning framed by the stranger’s poetics for a 20th Century classic. This essay is divided in two parts: the first one is a critical review of the last Corto Maltese’s graphic novel, The midnght sun, by the scenarist Juan Díaz Canales and the cartoonist Rubén Pellejero. It’s a tale picking up all the Pratt’s topoi, even though the frantic sequence of events dampen the psicologycal characterisations of the original Corto Maltese. The tale can be considered in continuity with the Pratt tradition, in the groove of a “stranger’s poetics” belonging to the venetian narrator’s whole work. In the second part, the essay analyses some features about the success of Hugo Pratt, universally considered a classic of 20th Century (not only graphic) literature.