The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries
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The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries Samuel Fleck Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Samuel Fleck All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries Samuel Fleck This dissertation is organized around main axes: the literary and critical concept of the Double and the analysis of Antonio Fogazzaro’s 1881 novel, Malombra, in which the Double plays a complex thematic role. In the first chapter, I address the concept of the Double as a critical category, assessing its meaning across three different levels of reality: in terms of the cultural specificity of the representation (the nineteenth century and Romantic literature), in terms of the theoretical approach (whether it is construed as a transcendental figure, as in Freudian theory, or a transgressive figure, as in Jungian theory, etc.) and in terms of its placement relative to the other themes in the text. In the second chapter, I take up the analysis of three Italian texts from the second half of the nineteenth century which privilege the theme of the Double and invest it with idiosyncratic meaning: Uno spirito in un lampone by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1867), Due anime in un corpo by Emilio de Marchi (1877) and Le storie del castello di Trezza by Giovanni Verga (1875). My reading of these texts draws on diverse psychoanalytic perspectives, namely those of Jung, Lacan and Abraham and Torok. In the third chapter, I carry out an extensive analysis of Fogazzaro’s Malombra. The first part of the analysis, which focuses on the novel’s two primary characters, Marina and Silla, shows how these characters’ unconscious conflicts animate the narrative, shape its itinerary and anchor its fantasmatic universe; the second part examines the ways in which the primary aspects of the plot work in tension with, and are offset by, the novel’s two subplots; the third part looks at points of comparison between Malombra and the three texts discussed in the second chapter, in relation to the theme of the Double and to other interrelated discourses and tropes. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1—The Double as a Critical Category………………………………………………….14 Chapter 2—The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Tarchetti’s Uno spirito in un lampone, De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo and Verga’s Le storie del castello di Trezza…………………………………………………..…………………………………………....40 Chapter 3—Fogazzaro’s Malombra………………………………………………………...…...97 I. The Psychical Itinerary of Malombra’s Main Plot…………………………….103 II. The Subplots of Malombra………………………………………………..………194 III. The Double in Malombra: Some Intertextual Constellations……………………..244 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...285 Bibliography……...…………………………………………………………………………….291 Appendix…………..……………………………………………………………………………301 i Introduction Part I: The Double and Malombra This dissertation is structured around two main axes: the first is the literary theme of the Double, as it came to be embodied in Italian literature from the second half of the nineteenth century and the second is the analysis of Antonio Fogazzaro’s novel Malombra, a text whose complex and layered psychical intrigue centers on problems of double-identity and double- existence. At the outset of this study, I would like to address a series of questions which may arise in relation to any prospective topic of literary inquiry: namely, what broader purpose is served by an investigation into the material at hand? Why the Double? And why Fogazzaro’s Malombra? I will develop the rationale behind this specific line of inquiry with reference to three major areas of consideration: the significance of the Double as a mediatory structure or instrument for literary comparison, the interdiscursive relationship between psychoanalysis and literature and the characterization of Marina—Malombra’s protagonist—as a crowning achievement of Fogazzaro’s art. The first consideration is the viability of the Double as a critical category and an instrument for literary analysis. The elusiveness and elasticity of the Double as a concept has led many specialists over the years to view it with skepticism, as Milica Zivkovic notes, citing the consensus articulated by Albert Guérard that “the word double is embarrassingly vague, as used in literary criticism”12. That notwithstanding, I would argue that the Double remains an essentially useful category, provided one takes efforts to define it carefully relative to the reality 1 Albert Guérard, "Concepts of the Double", in Stories of the Double, ed. Albert Guérard (New York: J.P. Lippincott, 1967), 3. 2 Milica Zivkovic, “The Double as the ‘Unseen’ of Culture: Toward a Definition of Doppelgänger,” Linguistics and Literature, Vol. 2, No. 7 (2000), 122. 1 of the text and the critical methodology. It is on this account that I have devoted the first chapter of this dissertation to excavating the concept of the Double and outlining some of the ways it has been interpreted across the fields of psychoanalysis, anthropology and cultural and literary studies. In addition to being useful as a critical category, however, the Double also posits a tool for comparing a vast number of nineteenth century European texts that represent themes ranging from the duality of being and double-identity to various scenarios of split consciousness and extreme instances of psychic division (themes generally subsumed under the rubric of the Double). Thus, by organizing this study around the theme of the Double, I hope to reinforce a sense of critical cohesion between the Italian texts analyzed and the broader European context, and in such a way, open productive avenues in the discourse of comparative literature. A second consideration about the broader significance of this dissertation relates to the potential for psychoanalysis to elucidate literature and the complementary potential for literature to elucidate psychoanalysis. Little explanation is required for the first aspect of this interdiscursive relationship, which regards the potential for psychoanalytic concepts to enhance the understanding, appreciation and relatability of literary texts. The most prominent approaches to the Double in literature derive from the various strands of psychoanalytic thought, and the critical methodology of this study takes into account three specific theoretical orientations: Freudian theory, Jungian theory and the theory of Abraham and Torok. Above and beyond the question of the Double, the selective application of psychoanalytic methodologies to the texts of Tarchetti, De Marchi, Verga and Fogazzaro throughout this dissertation generates practical insights into the scenarios depicted by shedding light on their psychological underpinnings. The second aspect of this interdiscursive relationship, concerning the potential for literature to inform the psychoanalytic discourse, highlights a reciprocal channel whereby the 2 observations made, and conclusions drawn in this dissertation may supplement the received knowledge of psychoanalytic concepts in the theoretical and clinical domains. In the same way that psychoanalytic concepts help to explicate scenarios in literature, literary representations of human experience have the capacity to enrich psychoanalytic understanding in the clinical context. Nowhere does this possibility appear more fully realized than in the writings of Franco- Hungarian psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, where technical insights and literary conceits appear seamlessly interwoven and where new concepts bearing names such as “crypt” and “phantom” are formulated in conjunction with literature and to the language of the analysands themselves. Nicholas Rand gives an account of the interdisciplinary space navigated by Abraham and Torok in his introduction to the volume of their collected writings, The Shell and the Kernel: One of the central features of Abraham and Torok’s work is a constant interchange between literature and psychoanalysis. This is a matter not simply of giving psychoanalytic interpretations of literature, but rather of transforming literature into a resource for clinical insight. New insights are possible because Abraham and Torok’s concepts are uncommonly versatile. For example, introjection, defined broadly as the psychic process of expansion, leaves entirely open the particular subject or problem under study. Thus literature can deepen psychoanalytic understanding by giving us nuance and artful accounts of situations that require or lead to introjection. For Abraham and Torok, the study of fictitious life-scenarios in literature parallels the psychoanalytic search for ever finer means of comprehending people and their joys or sufferings. 3 …Abraham and Torok’s explorations move fluidly between the clinical and literary realms, suggesting that literature and psychoanalysis are two different contexts for similar methodological insights. Torok has written that “the clinical realm works toward a better understanding of hiding in texts, while the literary analysis of the avenues of textual concealment offers allegories of reading for clinical psychoanalysis.” 4 5 3 Nicholas T. Rand, introduction to The Shell and the Kernel, trans. by Nicholas T. Rand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1994), 11-12. 4 Rand, introduction to The Shell and the Kernel,