Discard and Misunderstanding

A Reading of Don Giovanni in Sicilia

Abstract

This article examines the intertextual framework that structures the opening chapters of Vitaliano Brancati’s Don Giovanni in Sicilia, focusing in particular on the parodic rewriting of the Don Juan myth, the libertine tradition and decadent aesthetics. Starting from the paratextual function of the title, understood as a Genettean threshold, the analysis shows how the name “Giovanni” activates a series of expectations associated with the paradigm of the famous seducer, only to subject them immediately to a systematic process of ironic reversal. In light of Bakhtinian dialogism and subsequent theories of irony, three intertextual nodes prove especially significant: the distorted echo of Da Ponte and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the ironic resemanticization of fin-de-siècle atmospheres of d’Annunzian origin, and the references to libertine literature, particularly Jean Galli de Bibiena’s La Poupée.