Between Dream and Vision. Senilita as an Artist's Novel

This essay offers an interpretation of Senility (1898), Italo Svevo's second novel, in terms of Kunstlerroman, a genre that has a long tradition in the European novel, but in Italy emerged just at the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to the representations of the artist given by the Scapigliatura and the novels of Verga and D'Annunzio. Through the tools of sociology of art and the contributions of Svevo's most acute critics, this paper intends to reconsider the characters of Emilio Brentani and Stefano Bain, especially identifying in Stefano's trajectory the elaboration of a theme that will be central to Svevo's later production, namely the expression of an unreconciled relationship between reality and representation.