Incarcerating the Impossible: The Asylum in Italian Fantastic Literature

Abstract

This article explores the function of the asylum in Italian fantastic literature, considering three examples by Ugo Tarchetti, Matilde Serao, and Giuseppe Tonsi. I argue that the asylum is a space that serves to delegitimize the extraordinary claims of patients and that thus confines the subversive potential of fantastic literature. In this way, the asylum also allows for the fantastic to exist without upsetting the social order. I look at how patient testimonies are framed and at the crimes committed that factor into incarceration. I conclude that the subversive potential of the fantastic is considered more important than the violence that is committed by the patients, but that the fantastic itself is always elsewhere, at a remove from the alleged perpetrators and witnesses who are locked up.