Table Of ContentArchaeology of the Unconscious
In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, histo-
rians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retro-
actively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse
cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be-
tween France and Germany. Archaeology of the Unconscious aims to challenge
this perspective by adopting an unusual and thought-provoking viewpoint as the
one offered by the Italian case from the 1770s to the immediate aftermath of the
First World War, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provided Italy with
the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long
nineteenth century, characterized by the sedimentation, circulation, intersection,
and synergy of different cultural, philosophical, and literary traditions, proves
itself to be a privileged object of inquiry for an archaeological study of the uncon-
scious, a study whose object is not the alleged ‘origin’ of a pre-made theoretical
construct but rather the stratifications by which that specific construct was as-
sembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume
will analyse the formation and the circulation, across different authors and texts,
of a network of ideas and discourses on interconnected themes, including dreams,
memory, recollection, desire, imagination, fantasy, madness, creativity, inspira-
tion, magnetism, and somnambulism. Alongside questioning pre-given narratives
of the ‘history of the unconscious’, this book will employ the Italian ‘difference’
as a powerful perspective from whence to address the undeveloped potentialities
of the pre-Freudian unconscious, beyond uniquely psychoanalytical viewpoints.
Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French at the
University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Marie Curie post-
doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a research project on Dis-
traction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy, from
the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She obtained her PhD in Aesthet-
ics at the University of Pisa in 2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e
assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working
on a monograph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino).
Fabio Camilletti is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Warwick,
UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from a European view-
point: he published, among others, monographs on D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo
Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first complete edition of the German-French
anthology of ghost stories Fantasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia
lunare (Peter Lang), The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla
letteratura gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded
project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century.
Warwick Series in the Humanities
Series Editor: Christina Lupton
Titles in this Series
Picturing Women’s Health
Edited by Kate Scarth, Francesca Scott and Ji Won Chung
Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe
David Beck
New Jazz Conceptions
History, Theory, Practice
Edited by Roger Fagge and Nicolas Pillai
Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945
Edited by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and
Christopher Yiannitsaros
Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain
Edited by Berenike Jung and Stella Bruzzi
Mood
Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories
Edited by Birgit Breidenbach and Thomas Docherty
Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History,
Culture and Theory
Edited by Susannah Wilson
Archaeology of the Unconscious
Italian Perspectives
Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti
For more information about this series, please visit:
https://www.routledge.com/Warwick-Series-in-the-Humanities/book-
series/WSH
Archaeology of the
Unconscious
Italian Perspectives
Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and
Fabio Camilletti
First published 2020
by Routledge
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
ALESSANDRA ALOISI AND FABIO CAMILLETTI
1 Uneasy Sensibility: Pietro Verri on Pain and Pleasure 13
SABRINA FERRI
2 Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the
Somnambulist, Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in
Eighteenth-Century Italy 33
ALESSANDRA ALOISI
3 Jacopo’s Secret 50
FRANCO D’INTINO
4 Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old
Wives’ Tales’ 67
FABIO CAMILLETTI
5 At the Frontiers of Dreams: The Nightmares of the Vita
Nuova Read Through Freud and Manzoni 86
ANDREA MALAGAMBA
6 Italian Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious:
Irresistible Analogies from Muratori to Morselli 113
PAOLA CORI
7 Magnetic Culture and the Self in Post-Unification Italy 141
MORENA CORRADI
vi Contents
8 Drawing-Room Shivers: Spiritualism and Uneasy
Presences on the Pages of La Domenica del Corriere 164
FABRIzIO FONI AND IRENE INCARICO
9 Subconscious and Oneiric Consciousness in the Late
Nineteenth Century (and Beyond): A Focus on Sante De
Sanctis’s Studies on Dreams 185
SARA BOEzIO
10 Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo 217
OLMO CALzOLARI
11 Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s
La coscienza di Zeno 235
ALESSANDRA DIAzzI
Bibliography 257
Index 281
List of Contributors
Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French
at the University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Ma-
rie Curie post-doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a
research project on Distraction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic
Device in France and Italy, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth
centuries. She obtained her PhD in aesthetics at the University of Pisa in
2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio
sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working on a mono-
graph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino).
Sara Boezio studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and at the
École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in Lyon. Her MA thesis on
the essays of Federico De Roberto was awarded the Galilei-Carducci
prize. Her PhD thesis (University of Warwick) explores from a com-
parative and interdisciplinary perspective how historical, political,
social, and cultural changes shaped new perceptions and representa-
tions of time in fin-de-siècle Italy. Her research interests concern fin-
de-siècle European literary cultures and the late nineteenth-century
periodical press, as well as the relationship between poetry and visual
arts in early modern Italian literature, and cognitive literary studies.
Olmo Calzolari is a DPhil Student at the University of Oxford. Before
starting his doctoral project, he obtained an MPhil from Oxford and
a BA from the Università degli Studi di Siena. His interests revolve
around nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature, the pres-
ence of Leopardi in the Italian Novecento, and the history of medi-
cine. He collaborates with LEO (Leopardi Studies at Oxford) and the
Oxford Italian Postgraduate Seminars.
Fabio Camilletti is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of
Warwick, UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from
a European viewpoint: he published, among others, monographs on
D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first
complete edition of the German-French anthology of ghost stories Fan-
tasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia lunare (Peter Lang),
The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla letteratura
viii List of Contributors
gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded
project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century.
Paola Cori is Lecturer in Modern Languages (Italian) at the Univer-
sity of Birmingham, where she is also Honorary Research Fellow at
the Leopardi Centre. Her main research interests are in the litera-
ture and philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present day,
particularly Giacomo Leopardi. Her most recent article, Ipnotismo
e iperrealtà. Spunti per un dialogo tra Leopardi e il postmoderno,
is forthcoming with Italian Studies, 74, 3, summer 2019, while her
monograph Forms of Thinking in Leopardi’s Zibaldone. Religion,
Science and Everyday Life is forthcoming with Legenda (Cambridge,
August 2019).
Morena Corradi is Associate Professor at Queens College and at the
Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York). Her research
focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature and
printed media, fantastic and gothic literature, narrative theory, and
nation building. She has published articles on the fantastic in the
works of the Milanese Scapigliatura and on post-unification political
and literary journals. She is Author of the monograph Spettri d’Ita-
lia: scenari del fantastico nella pubblicistica postunitaria milanese
(Longo Editore, 2016).
Alessandra Diazzi is Lecturer in Italian studies at the University of
Manchester. In 2015, she was awarded a PhD in Italian Studies from
the University of Cambridge. She published on contemporary Italian
literature – Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Manganelli, and
Ottiero Ottieri, among – cinema (Gianni Amelio), and René Girard’s
mimetic theory. She works primarily on the reception of psychoanal-
ysis in Italian literature and culture in post-World War II Italy.
Franco D’Intino is Professor of modern Italian literature at the Univer-
sity of Rome Sapienza where he directs the ‘Laboratorio Leopardi’
(School of Advanced Studies). His main areas of research are the
autobiographical genre and Romanticism, in particular the work of
Giacomo Leopardi. He is the critical editor of Leopardi’s translations
in prose and verse and autobiographical writings, and co-editor of
the English translation of the Zibaldone (Farrar Straus & Giroux/
Penguin 2013, 20152).
Sabrina Ferri is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Notre
Dame. Her research encompasses Italian literature, philosophy, and
science in the long eighteenth century. She has written on Casanova,
Alfieri, Vico, and Leopardi, among others. Her first book, Ruins Past:
Modernity in Italy, 1744–1836 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015),
reconstructs Italy’s philosophy of history between the eighteenth and
List of Contributors ix
early nineteenth centuries. She is currently working on modern the-
ories of the imagination and on the relationship between fiction and
revolution.
Fabrizio Foni (Umbertide, 1980) is Lecturer in the Department of
Italian and Member of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the
University of Malta, with a specialisation in popular culture. His re-
search interests include horror, thriller and science fiction, the adven-
ture novels by Emilio Salgari and his followers, comic-book series,
1960s and 1970s Italian gothic cinema, as well as the multifaceted
fictional representations of sideshows and freaks. He co-authored the
most comprehensive annotated bibliography of criticism on the Fan-
tastic in Italian literature: Stefano Lazzarin, and others, Il fantastico
italiano: Bilancio critico e bibliografia commentata (dal 1980 a oggi)
(Florence: Le Monnier Università, 2016).
Irene Incarico (La Spezia, 1981) is Visiting Senior Lecturer in the
Department of Italian of the University of Malta, where she teaches
study-units ranging from medieval literature to women’s writing. She
is also International Students and Programme Leader at Chiswick
House School (Malta), where she teaches French. She published ar-
ticles on science fiction, Emilio Salgari, and Stephen King. She co-
authored a ‘cybergoth’ novel, and authored several science fiction and
horror short stories. She also co-edited with Alice Favaro the book
Eurofumetto & globalizzazione: Studi su graphic novel e linguaggi
dei comics (La Spezia: Cut-Up Publishing, 2018).
Andrea Malagamba teaches in Rome. He is the author of the mono-
graph “Quell’ombra io sono”. Io, Tu, Noi nella poesia di Eugenio
Montale (Giulio Perrone 2011) and the editor of the anthology of
texts: Giacomo Leopardi, Il gusto. Bellezza, sapori, mondanità nello
Zibaldone (Edizioni Estemporanee 2015). He has published several
studies on Leopardi’s poetry and philosophical vocabulary, as well
as on the intertextual relationship between Dante and Primo Levi.
He also works on social media, cinema, and TV series, and he edited
the volume Figure della serialità televisiva (Bevivino 2010).
