Beyond the Family Romance

Giovanni Pascoli (18551912) is one of Italys most canonical and beloved poets. In Beyond the Family Romance, Maria Truglio offers fresh insight into the uncanny qualities of Pascolis domestic verse. As suggested by the Freudian title, this study opens a dialogue between Pascolis literature and Freuds theories, with a particular focus on each authors interrogation of origins. Through close readings and historical contextualization, themes of regression, memory, and other manifestations of origins are analyzed, moving Pascolis poetry beyond the biographical strictures that have hitherto confined it. Truglios post-structuralist readings question the dichotomy between safety within the home and the threatening outside world, revealing the ambivalences with which images of the home are fraught in Pascolis poetry. In addition to the sustained comparison with Freuds writing, Beyond the Family Romance explores parallels between Pascolis work and such writers as Tarchetti, Boito, Poe, and Invernizio. Rethinking the concept of the fanciullino (little child), Truglio shows that Pascolis poetry enacts a symbiosis between the logic of the rational modern adult and the mythic vision of the child.