SOURCE: “‘He Was Tall, Dark and Bald’: Aristocratic Desire and Fantasies of Authority in I promessi sposi,” in Forum Italicum, Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring, 1991, pp. 3-16.

In the following essay, Stone probes the pro-aristocratic element in Manzoni's otherwise republican novel I promessi sposi.

Like every title, mine too aims at arousing the reader's curiosity: as carefully as it is required by the difficult art of wrapping presents—example or metaphor perhaps not entirely out of place—, what is sought after is a combination of terms able to promise the surprising, the unthought, or at least a modest infringement on the routine of scholarly interpretation, on the status quo of every day critical discourse.

Those who are acquainted with traditional and/or recent readings of I promessi sposi know how anti-aristocratic this novel is supposed to be: how much it would strive to convey, however problematically, a liberal, progressive, that...