Telling Details: Realism and the Evidential Paradigm: The Case of Manzoni

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure the long-standing debate on the forms and function of description in realist writing, I reflect on the status accorded to details within literary descriptions in early nineteenth-century fiction. I argue that, in the movement towards realism, details—especially in character descriptions—acquire a new evidential function. They act as clues to be deciphered or symptoms to be interpreted by the reader within a system of signification that can be associated with the evidential paradigm, as defined by Carlo Ginzburg. The first section of the essay focuses on the changing function of details within literary descriptions between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discusses, from different disciplinary perspectives, three examples of the epistemic shift that was brought about by the rise of the evidential paradigm. The second section of the essay takes Manzoni as a case study and focuses on the evidential function of details in I Promessi Sposi.