Imagination and fear in the Matteo Bandello’s «Novelle»

Abstract

Within Matteo Bandello’s Novelle there is the theme of fear linked to the world of the supernatural: spirits, corpses, cemeteries, as well as the fear of the devil and of the night are the elements that make up the fantastic of the writer. This theme, however, if it mobilizes a whole series of topoi and enactments between the comic and the horrific, variously employed by other sixteenth-century novelists as well (think of Lasca’s Cene), is related to the broader theme of imagination. From the novelle analyzed in this contribution, in fact, it is possible to observe how the fear of the supernatural never has real foundations but arises from and is nurtured by the imaginative faculty of men and women who, blinded by fear, are unable to interpret reality. The writer, therefore, does not hesitate to point out the gap between the fervid imagination of the characters, against whom he points his finger, and a starker reality.