Italo Svevo and Experimentalism in Lo Specifico Del Dottor Menghi and Argo E Il Suo Padrone

Abstract

This essay examines Lo specifico del Dottor Menghi and Argo e il suo padrone, by Italo Svevo (Trieste - Italy - 1861 / Motta di Livenza - Italy - 1928). These two-short stories hover between experimentalism and fantastic literature to create the fabulous narrative laboratory (CEPACH, 2010) for the novel La coscienza di Zeno, the author's masterpiece. Svevo writes fantastic narratives about illness and the fear of death, a key theme in his oeuvre. Based mainly on the ideas of Cepach (2008 and 2015), Piglia (2004), Cavaglion (2008), Ceserani (2006), Ramos (2001 and 2015), Volobuef (2000) and Todorov (1975), we seek to scrutinise the aspects of Svevian auto-textual experimentalism in the literary praxis which structure these two short-stories.