Metaliterary Fogazzaro: Bovarysme and Mysticism in Malombra (1881)

Abstract

This article analyses how Fogazzaro’s own elaboration of the theory of the evolution of species (as a mystical and ascensional vision of the world) influenced his theory of the novel and had an impact on his activity as writer. In particular, the article concentrates on the innovative elements of Malombra, Fogazzaro’s first and highly successful novel. It argues that Fogazzaro used the cliché of the woman reader to postulate an affinity between the experience of reading (and more in general the aesthetic experience) and the mystical rapture: a totalizing experience, detached from reality and beyond rational thinking in which the self dissolves its boundaries and experiences a sense of fusion and identity loss. The importance given to the act of reading and writing as aesthetic and mystical experiences is seen as the ground in which Fogazzaro’s literary experimentation, which is here anticipating modernist approaches, meets and is enriched by his theological Modernism.