Romanzo vero e inverisimile nell’Italia del Settecento: note di ricezione

Judgment of eighteenth-century Italian narrative episodes, which remained unchanged for centuries, even in the world of criticism itself, only becoming more attentive and descriptive in recent decades, can perhaps draw advantage from an analysis that considers the question, historicising it, of the role attributed to the reader and covered by the practice of the individual reading. The relationship between the work of fiction and the various guises of its addressees seems in fact to be able to clarify some important aspects of the reception of eighteenth-century Italian fiction, for example the absence of adherence to certain categories widely shared in the rest of Europe, such as those of the individual and curiosity. This perspective can also help to revise, in particular, the accusations of implausibility traditionally launched against eighteenth-century narrative episodes, and can perhaps help to resolve the contradiction of a canon that nevertheless preserved over time, among the those narrative texts, precisely those farthest from the real.