In his final novel, Petrolio, Pier Paolo Pasolini offers a dismal portrait of neo-capitalist Italy. Focusing on a programmatic referencing of sloth or acedia, this article explores a series of parallels between the symptomatology of the sin and what Pasolini saw as the unreality of consumerist culture. Conferring a central importance on Pasolini’s declared intent to compose his final novel in a type of “non-style, “ the article posits a stylistic implementation of the symptoms of acedia in Petrolio as part of a reconfiguration of intellectual engagement. This reconfigured engagement with neo-capitalist Italy is based on the provocative negation of the conventional author figure as purveyor of style and the related attempt to insert the living voice within the confines of literary artifice.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Amberson, D., (2025), "Neo-Capitalism, Acedia and Non-Style in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Petrolio", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Amberson, Deborah. "Neo-Capitalism, Acedia and Non-Style in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Petrolio." Quaderni d'italianistica 29 (2): 2009. 53-72. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v29i2.8456. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.