Polvere e stile in Menzogna e sortilegio

Abstract

If the material that gives shape to Arturo's Island (1957) is water: the original sign of life, then it can be thought that it is poverty, at least in part, that characterizes Morante other novels. In fact, both La Storia (1974) and Aracoeli (1982) seem to find in this element the synthesis and phenomenology of collective (destruction) and private (the aridity of Andalusia as a landscape-omen) ailments. Even in her masterpiece, Lies and Sorcery (1948), the particles, minute and fantastic, are crammed with lyrical and symbolic meanings that have not yet been investigated. This essay – making use first of the Word Frequency Analysis and then of the close reading of a passage – intends to identify these loci, map the quantitative data into thematic nuclei and, finally, propose interpretations.