On the historical novel

After reading the Promessi Sposi as soon as it was published in 1827, Goethe expressed a very favourable view. He admired the gift of poetic invention and inspiration of sentiment that stemmed directly from the author’s heart, and that he had already appreciated in Manzoni’s poetry and drama. He commented negatively, however, on the lengthy historical digressions in Manzoni’s third volume, holding that they weighed down and interfered with the authenticity of Manzoni’s literary narrative. Manzoni was struck by this comment and planned to write to Goethe. The letter was never sent, but it provided a basis for Manzoni’s reflection on the historical novel and the relationship between history and invention, which tormented him for many years to come, and which he set out in essay form only much later. This essay, Del romanzo storico e, in genere, de’ componimenti misti di storia e d’invenzione, was published in 1850 among his Opere varie. In the first and shorter part of the essay, the author proposes the theoretical nucleus of the question of mixed genres, and in the second part examines two genres in ancient and modern literature that combined history and invention, namely, the epic poem and the historical tragedy. Like these two genres, the modern historical novel - according to Manzoni - combines two totally different things, namely fantasy and historical documentation. The historical novel aspires to a representation of historical truth but, since it is a novel, namely a genre of literary invention, it can only represent truth that is poetic or verisimilar (namely, something that could actually happen), while the objective of historiography is to narrate positive truth, namely what has actually happened. In his essay, Manzoni also criticizes a narrative genre that he himself had founded in Italy with his Promessi Sposi, and that had led to numerous other works in the 1830s and 1840s.