Abstract
Critical debate on Il marchese di Roccaverdina (1901) has centred on whether Capuana retains his faith in naturalist poetics and positivist ideology or evolves towards a neo-idealist stance. Neo-idealist elements have been detected in two areas of the novel. For some critics, certain characters, such as Agrippina Solmo, the Marchese's selfless peasant lover, and the priest Don Silvio, anti-naturalistically transcend their milieu. Others stress the Marchese's redemptive dementia: like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, he kills in the belief that he stands above herd morality only to be maddened by his conscience. Where Crocean commentators applaud Capuana's repudiation of determinist psychology, many Marxist critics regret a reversion to Catholic bourgeois morality. For Carlo Madrignani (1970), in particular, Capuana renounces positivist psychopathology for a nebulous ‘dramma di coscienza’.
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