AL CONFINE CON L’ALDILÀ. IPOTESI SUL ROMANZO D’AVVENTURA

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to outline the links between adventure novel and the afterlife. Starting with Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, which can be considered – for different reasons – the models of the modern adventure tale, the focus is then shifted on two novels published between the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, that make a crucial step in the history of the genre. A specific attention is given to the depiction of the main characters of the two novels, mysterious and, in a sense, diabolic heroes who seem to have a special relationship with the afterlife. The proposed thesis is that the afterlife in the adventure novel – and more specifically in these two examples – is configured as a border territory, absorbed into an immanent dimension and functional, in different ways, to the narrative structure of the tales.