Le avventure di Casanova

Abstract

To which literary genre can Histoire de ma vie be traced? Are we really in front of a text that can be peacefully classified as belonging to the eighteenthcentury memoirs tout-court, or there is always something that escapes, that eludes, as well as its author, to our temptation of readers who would like to deal with a text, measure ourselves with it, comforted by solid interpretative schemes? And what is the author-protagonist of this labyrinthine and vertiginous work looking for? In what way is he confronting and bearing witness to an era as rich yet unsatisfying as the one in which he happened to live and about which he happened to write? What voices does he give space to in his writing? All of this, and the delicate balance between wandering and nostos, is discussed in this essay.