Abstract

Giuseppe Fraccaroli (1849-1918), a Greek scholar known for the controversy that opposed him to Girolamo Vitelli and classical philology of German descent, published in 1907 the dystopian novel "L'isola dei ciechi" ("The Island of the Blind People"), an imaginary journey in a land whose inhabitants, deprived of the sense of sight, have entirely shaped their habits and their knowledge in the presumption of the absence of light. Brilliant and humorous satire of obtuse faith in the positive sciences and in the Progress "blindly" confident in its infallibility, L'isola dei ciechi is at the same time an early testimony of Swift's fortune in Italy.