Abstract

Giovanni Testori started working on I Promessi sposi alla prova in 1982 a few months after he began the composition of the novel In Exitu; his collection of articles La maestà della vita was also published the same year. Although in different ways, these three works deal with the theme of plague and tackle a prominent figure such as the archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584). This essay examines the connections between these works and traces the reasons for Testori’s rewriting of Alessandro Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed by analyzing his 1965 preface to Carlo Borromeo’s Memoriale ai milanesi (written after the plague in 1576-77) and his unpublished play La peste di Milano (1975).