Manzoni e il realismo creaturale

The essay aims to address the question of Manzoni’s realism in the light of Auerbach’s categories, a topic that has already been the subject of critical discussion. Specifically, it focuses on Manzoni’s concept of ‘creaturely realism’ and its antecedents, which include 17th-18th-century painting, Porta’s poetry, and most notably Pietro Verri’s Osservazioni sulla tortura, a text with which I Promessi sposi have been in dialogue since their origin. Finally, it addresses the question of the incompatibility between the idyll and Manzoni’s realism, through a reconstruction of the early 19th-century debate on the modern idyll (Goethe, Chateaubriand, Fauriel) and a series of textual examples taken from I Promessi sposi.