L’autore contro l’eroe

Borgese, “Rubé” e la teoria del romanzo d’inizio Novecento

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, in spite of Benedetto Croce’s authoritative and damning remarks against the category of literary genres in his journal «La Critica», a theoretical reflection on the novel as a genre develops in Italy, although in a somewhat fragmentary fashion. One of the most relevant figures engaging in this reflection is the writer, translator and critic Giuseppe Antonio Borgese: rooted in the German tripartite framework of Epik/Lyrik/Dramatik, his reflection on the novel partly overlaps with that of contemporary scholars such as Győrgy Lukács, Michail Bakhtin or Käte Friedemann and presents the issue of non-identification between author and hero as one of its key elements. This aspect, developed by Borgese both in theoretical and narrative terms (especially in his novel Rubé), is expressed with peculiar perspicuity in a yet unpublished letter he sends in 1945 to his former student Liliana Scalero: here, striking a parallel between his own novel and Goethe’s Werther, Borgese challenges the biographical interpretations that would affect for a long time the reception of his work.