ABSTRACT
The mother is the central core of Morante's work from the beginning. From Le bellissime avventure di Caterì dalla trecciolina (1942) to Aracoeli (1982), an often narcissistic and symbiotic motherly love is the force that sinks the deranged subject into sadomasochistic relationships and is the driving force behind the author's writing. Elsa Morante's writing stems from a lack of love from the original mother and a loss related to her own frustrated maternity. However, with respect to Morante's previous novels, Aracoelirepresents a turning point in the concept of beatific motherly love. Many of Elsa Morante's novels are founded semantically and rhetorically on the dichotomy of a character split between opposite traits, and stage a perpetual chain of circumstances that is not ruled by the principle of non-contradiction. Elsa Morante's 'Gypsy and Moorish Andalusia' represents, in Aracoeli, the prototype of an ancient land, the charmed and fabulous genre of legends and popular songs.
