ABSTRACT
Female readers were described as possessing vivid imaginations, heightened sensibility, and marked tendencies towards daydreaming. In Italy the bovarystic cliche seemed to intrigue many writers and in the nineteenth century a great number of novels developed this theme. The chapter analyses the notions of bovarysme and the paradox of fictionality which define the theoretical frame in which Lillusione. Federico De Roberto makes an overlap between the novelistic illusion and the 'illusion of love'. The chapter argues that alongside his reflection on the passion of love, De Roberto reflected on the function of literature. L'illusione was the famous of the Teresa Uzeda family trilogy of novels, the best known of which is I Vicere. The ambivalence of Teresa in relation to the novel as a genre was that of De Roberto who was squaring things up with Romanticism, a movement which he wanted to criticise but which exercised a fascination over him.
