Literature

Abstract

Chapter 5, ‘Literature’, investigates four instances of ecstatic dis-order in the following literary works: Serao’s Cuore infermo (1881), Fogazzaro’s Piccolo mondo moderno (1901) and Il Santo (1905), Capuana’s ‘Forze occulte’ (1902), ‘Un vampiro’ (1904), and ‘Fatale influsso’ (1906), and D’Annunzio’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911). Each work focuses on a different form of ecstatic dis-order which involves the transgression of a certain normative order and discloses the troubling drives of each protagonist’s inner unconscious world, revealing a conflict that echoes tensions the authors themselves were confronted with. Serao’s Cuore infermo centres on the dis-order unfolding from a woman’s encounter with passion. It explores the conflicts arising from the clash between the normative obligations imposed upon women by society and their unrestricted desires, culminating in the protagonist’s ecstatic self-shattering drives. Fogazzaro’s Piccolo mondo moderno and Il Santo tackle the ecstatic dis-order of a passionate man who sublimates his earthly drives by turning to God and becoming a kind of saint, unearthing an opposition between the normativity of the religious establishment and the individual’s ecstatic religion emanating directly from the unconscious. Capuana’s short stories addresses the occult ecstatic dis-order that challenges the materialist order. The characters in these short stories point to an ecstatic otherness inextricably linked to the other within the self: their unconscious other. Finally, D’Annunzio’s mystery play engages with the queer dis-order expressed through St Sebastian’s experiences of ecstasy, highlighting the ways in which the latter undermine the gender normative order and unleash the drive towards ecstatic self-laceration.