Abstract

This analysis pursues a Lacanian approach and is aimed at historicizing the «obscure sickness» of Gonzalo Pirobutirro d'Eltino, the main character in Carlo Emilio Gadda's "Acquainted with Grief", by locating its causes in the advent of monopolistic capitalism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, given the emphasis it places on the role of linguistic and social relations (namely the symbolic order) in shaping the unconscious, allows to shed light on reasons for Gonzalo's existential malaise that are not pre-eminently psychological, as the character strives to insinuate, but of a sociocultural nature.