Disrupted Identities, Disrupted Realism: The Double in Anna Banti’s ‘Terrible Trilogy’

Abstract

The experience of the split self is a recurrent theme in Anna Banti’s narratives — one that is usually rendered through the literary trope of the double. This is the case with her group of works known together as the trilogia terribile — comprised of narratives (Il bastardo, 1953; Allarme sul lago, 1954; and La monaca di Sciangai, 1957) that centre around notions of duality. The double, with its inherent penchant for the dual, the paradoxical, the co-existence of opposites, and with its essentially anti-hegemonic character, is intrinsic to magical realism, on a thematic but also on a formal level. By analysing the double in Banti’s trilogia terribile, I will ascertain its subversive function, thus exploring the notion that magical realism, in trying to challenge binary oppositions and thus dualistic conceptions of certain aspects of human life, induces a disruption of conventional ideas about identity.