THE SECRET GAME BY ELSA MORANTE

Apstrakt

In 1999, Marco Bardini attributed the lack of interest shown by critics and the public toward Elsa Morante’s short stories to two main factors: on the one hand, their limited availability, as they were scattered across periodicals that are now difficult to access; on the other, the severe and dismissive judgment expressed by certain critics—among them Cesare Garboli—who tended to regard this early work as merely a means for Morante to earn a living. On the eve of the centenary of Morante’s birth, however, there emerged a growing interest in what has been defined as the Morantian prehistory. Scholarly attention initially focused on the dreamlike universe (e.g., Porciani, 2006), and subsequently expanded to thematic continuities between the short stories and the novels (e.g., Bardini, 2012; Porciani, 2013), to the presence of elements linked to the author’s Jewish background (e.g., Beer, 2013), and, finally, to the fairy-tale, fantastic, and sacred dimensions (e.g., Garrido, 2014; Zangrandi, 2014; Manetti, 2014). The gothic dimension of Morante’s short fiction, however, has so far remained at the margins of critical discussion. This article aims to explore this theme by examining the presence and function of gothic motifs in Elsa Morante’s short stories collected in Il gioco segreto (1941). Drawing on the specificities of the gothic within the Italian literary tradition (e.g., Farnetti, 1988; Ceserani, 2007; Camilletti, 2018 and 2024; Serafini and Malvestio, 2023; Serafini, 2024), and considering its potential as a form of symbolic resistance to oppressive political and cultural structures—as well as its role as a vehicle for social critique (e.g., Billiani and Sulis, 2007; Billiani, 2023)—the article analyzes the ways in which Morante employed gothic elements to express anxieties and dissent related to the Fascist dictatorship.