Sciascia, Manzoni and the narration of history

Abstract

The essay examines Leonardo Sciascia’s historical narratives starting from the author’s debt to Manzoni’s Storia della Colonna Infame and to Manzoni’s writings on the historical novel. In his work with documentary sources and in his investigation into the ways in which the archive is constructed, Sciascia interweaves the discourse of the judge and the historian, but adds to them the discourse of the narrator: the main theme is justice and the abuse of power, that is, the unjust sentences that conceal human perversions behind the reason of State, in the context of an analysis of the eternal evils that afflict Italy. We can also see how, in a common recognition of Manzoni’s authority, Sciascia’s writing meets micro-history in the sign of micrological attention to emblematic testimonies and the search for forms capable of narrating and representing the voices of what has been forgotten.