Ma quando io avrò durata l'eroica fatica di trascrivere questa storia da questo dilavato e graffiato autografo, e l'avrò data, come sul dirsi, alla luce, si troverà egli poi chi duri la fatica di leggerla?"

No abstract

The master-slave dialectic that illustrates a step in the process of Hegelian self-consciousness, of the recognition-seeking relationship between the subject and the Other provides a paradigm of social relations. Hegel's primeval tale finds resonance in Luigi Capuana's Il marchese di Roccaverdina, through the marquis's rapport with his servants, Agrippina Solmo and Rocc o Criscione. Capuana's rustics may be construed as representations of the slave insofar as they become exploited objects essential for the landowner's achievement of subjectivity; however, as in the characteristic role reversal of Hegel's dialectic, the marquis cannot escape his sense of dependency on his Others. Subsequently, the slave becomes imbued with agency, for without him the master is nothing. This study examines the power dynamic between the marquis and his servants in order to demonstrate how his socio-psychological crisis greatly depends on his interactions and relations with the principal popular characters of the novel.

This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story ‘I fatali’ (‘The Fated Ones’) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) (1869). It focuses on the mortal rivalry between the father and son figures, Count Sagrezwitch and Baron Saternez, who become known in late nineteenth-century Milanese society of the short story as true embodiments of fatal beings belonging to popular superstition, known as jinxes – bringers of bad fortune, illness, harm, and even death to others. Drawing from Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of the Doppelgänger, it is argued that these protagonists emerge as complementary doubles for one another, as opposing incarnations of Death in the form of mysterious foreigners. This chapter also highlights the post-Unification, socio-cultural undertones of Tarchetti’s fantastic tale, affirms the existence of an Italian Gothic, and reveals the author’s portrayal of death’s spectacular nature.