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10 A double dose of death in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s ‘I fatali’

Abstract

This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story I fatali (The Fated Ones) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) (1869). It focuses on the mortal rivalry between the father and son figures, Count Sagrezwitch and Baron Saternez, who become known in late nineteenth-century Milanese society of the short story as true embodiments of fatal beings belonging to popular superstition, known as jinxes – bringers of bad fortune, illness, harm, and even death to others. Drawing from Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of the Doppelgänger, it is argued that these protagonists emerge as complementary doubles for one another, as opposing incarnations of Death in the form of mysterious foreigners. This chapter also highlights the post-Unification, socio-cultural undertones of Tarchetti’s fantastic tale, affirms the existence of an Italian Gothic, and reveals the author’s portrayal of death’s spectacular nature.

Abstract

This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story I fatali (The Fated Ones) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) (1869). It focuses on the mortal rivalry between the father and son figures, Count Sagrezwitch and Baron Saternez, who become known in late nineteenth-century Milanese society of the short story as true embodiments of fatal beings belonging to popular superstition, known as jinxes – bringers of bad fortune, illness, harm, and even death to others. Drawing from Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of the Doppelgänger, it is argued that these protagonists emerge as complementary doubles for one another, as opposing incarnations of Death in the form of mysterious foreigners. This chapter also highlights the post-Unification, socio-cultural undertones of Tarchetti’s fantastic tale, affirms the existence of an Italian Gothic, and reveals the author’s portrayal of death’s spectacular nature.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures viii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Series editor’s preface xiv
  6. Acknowledgements xvi
  7. Introduction – the corpse in the closet 1
  8. Part I Gothic graveyards and afterlives
  9. 1 Past, present, and future in the Gothic graveyard 21
  10. 2 ‘On the very Verge of legitimate Invention’ 34
  11. 3 Entranced by death 48
  12. Part II Gothic revolutions and undead histories
  13. 4 ‘This dreadful machine’ 63
  14. 5 Undying histories 76
  15. 6 Deadly interrogations 88
  16. Part III Gothic apocalypses: dead selves/dead civilizations
  17. 7 The annihilation of self and species 103
  18. 8 Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction 116
  19. 9 Dead again 130
  20. Part IV Global Gothic dead
  21. 10 A double dose of death in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s ‘I fatali’ 145
  22. 11 Through the opaque veil 157
  23. 12 Afterdeath and the Bollywood Gothic noir 174
  24. Part V Twenty-first-century Gothic and death
  25. 13 Dead and ghostly children in contemporary literature for young people 191
  26. 14 Modernity’s fatal addictions 204
  27. 15 ‘I’m not in that thing you know ... I’m remote. I’m in the cloud’ 218
  28. Index 233
The Gothic and death
This chapter is in the book The Gothic and death
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526107916.00021

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures viii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Series editor’s preface xiv
  6. Acknowledgements xvi
  7. Introduction – the corpse in the closet 1
  8. Part I Gothic graveyards and afterlives
  9. 1 Past, present, and future in the Gothic graveyard 21
  10. 2 ‘On the very Verge of legitimate Invention’ 34
  11. 3 Entranced by death 48
  12. Part II Gothic revolutions and undead histories
  13. 4 ‘This dreadful machine’ 63
  14. 5 Undying histories 76
  15. 6 Deadly interrogations 88
  16. Part III Gothic apocalypses: dead selves/dead civilizations
  17. 7 The annihilation of self and species 103
  18. 8 Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction 116
  19. 9 Dead again 130
  20. Part IV Global Gothic dead
  21. 10 A double dose of death in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s ‘I fatali’ 145
  22. 11 Through the opaque veil 157
  23. 12 Afterdeath and the Bollywood Gothic noir 174
  24. Part V Twenty-first-century Gothic and death
  25. 13 Dead and ghostly children in contemporary literature for young people 191
  26. 14 Modernity’s fatal addictions 204
  27. 15 ‘I’m not in that thing you know ... I’m remote. I’m in the cloud’ 218
  28. Index 233
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