"Then he read loudly": Ortis reader's gestures and voice

Abstract

The essay proposes an analysis of Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis based on a discussion of the passages in which the protagonist is represented in the act of reading, of opening and closing books, of declaiming their content. What emerges is the central value that the practice of reading plays in Jacopo’s experience: by annotating the classics and the Bible, he seeks answers to his crisis and finds confirmation and omen in the books; and by reading aloud to Teresa he manages to circumvent the unspeakability of his love. In the novel’s ending, not surprisingly, the waning of illusions, sentimental and political, implies the renunciation of reading, which coincides with the ‘apostasy from virtue’ and heralds suicide.