The fragile community. Psychiatric illness in Mario Tobino and Paolo Milone

Abstract

The two novels Le libere donne di Magliano by Mario Tobino and L’arte di legare le persone by Paolo Milone, despite having been published almost seventy years apart from each other, present an affine structural approach, which can be illuminated through a critical reading and a thematic investigation that places them in mutual dialogue, highlighting any continuity and caesures. The essay intends to examine the narrative modalities, the expressive resources and the rhetorical strategies through which the two writers-psychiatrists outline their experience within mental hospital communities (Tobino), mental health centers and psychiatric wards (Milone), highlighting not only the primary characterizations of the multiform dialectic that is triggered in the relationship between doctor (narrating voice) - patient (narrated voice), but also the relational significance that is expressed in the authorial posture adopted, from which derive then the entire baggage of formal and linguistic operations, the proximity to the subjects told, the subjectivity never zeroed.

Keywords

• diary
• fragility
• «l’arte di legare le persone»
• «le libere donne di magliano»
• psychiatric illness