La Scapigliatura nell’inferno di Milano

Abstract

The essay examines the presence of Dante’s Inferno in the journalistic and narrative production of the Scapigliatura democratica dedicated to the slums of Milan. Starting from the late 1870s, in fact, in the works of ‘scapigliati’ authors such as Paolo Valera, Francesco Giarelli and Lodovico Corio, it is possible to find numerous references to Dante’s first cantica, both on an intertextual and a structural level. In this regard, the essay intends to highlight the forms and ideological motivations behind such infernal characterization, focusing on the function of Dante’s Inferno as a reservoir of images and motifs capable of validating, among the public, the vision of the most hidden areas of the “moral capital” of Italy.