Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of Giorgio Manganelli's essay (1977) on Thomas De Quincey's On Murder as One of the Fine Arts, and on a review to the same essay by Mario Praz (1978). Comparing the two texts, the article tries to prove the profound difference, and the resulting mutual misunderstandings, which divided two personalities who had in common a taste for the bizarre and the passion for baroque literature. The difference between them lies in the opposite way of thinking and using historical and cultural documentation in their critical works: while Praz used to reconstruct it with the utmost care, Manganelli superposed his own obsessions on objects of the research.