The Resurrection of the Body

Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally killed in Rome in 1975, a macabre end to a career that often explored humanity's capacity for violence and cruelty. Along with the mystery of his murderer's identity, Pasolini left behind a controversial but acclaimed oeuvre as well as a final quartet of beguiling projects that signaled a radical change in his aesthetics and view of reality. The Resurrection of the Bodyis an original and compelling interpretation of these final works: the screenplaySaint Paul, the scenario forPorn-Theo-Colossal, the immense and unfinished novelPetrolio, and his notorious final film,Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, a disturbing adaptation of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Together these works, Armando Maggi contends, reveal Pasolini's obsession with sodomy and its role within his apocalyptic view of Western society. One of the first studies to explore the ramifications of Pasolini's homosexuality,The Resurrection of the Bodyalso breaks new ground by putting his work into fruitful conversation with an array of other thinkers such as Freud, Strindberg, Swift, Henri Michaux, and Norman O. Brown.

Armando Maggi is professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance, also published by the University of Chicago Press.