Abstract

Fratelli, Carmelo Samonà’s novel published in 1978, questions the possibility of telling and naming mental illness. The present essay aims to analyze the formal expedients through which the book tackles the ineffability of a disease. The narrative analysis is conducted through a vertical thematic reading by relying on Francesco Orlando’s critical remarks. The central motifs around which the entire work gravitates are the representation/resemantization of the domestic space and the internal-external dichotomy, the dualism between the language of reason and the language of illness, the weakness of a conventional and exclusively verbal dialogical system, the reflection on writing as a hermeneutic device incapable of representing otherness.