ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins with this dichotomy and traces its development inside the textual boundaries of L’isola di Arturo. The title, L’isola di Arturo. Romanzo, significantly resonates with the echoes of courtly literature, of the Old French romances and of Renaissance chivalric epics. In Italian, the very word romanzo has many connotations and can refer as much to medieval verse romances or to chivalric epic romances as to the modem historical novel inaugurated by Sir Walter Scott and developed during the nineteenth century. L’isola di Arturo is a refracted image of a literary tradition that goes back as far as the earliest romances. The author concludes by offering a reading of L’isola di Arturo as a novel that asks to be read as a romance. The dichotomy between reality and fiction is as old as writing itself, as old, indeed, as the first romanzi which have this tension built into their very code.
