DENTRO BABELE. La polifonia diabolica di "Melmoth the Wanderer"

The publication in 1820 of Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin, was received with suspicion and apprehension. Looking back at the main reviews published in various English magazines between 1820 and 1821, it emerges that not only what and who Maturin talked about aroused bewilderment (torture, murder, betrayal and an incarnation of evil that appeared disturbing irrepressible and indifferent to the laws of men and of God); to worry and to generate alarm was also how he talked about them. In addition to the eponymous protagonist, it was indeed the structure of the work to be perceived as the stigmata of a diabolic nature – in the etymological sense of the term – able to divide and fragment if not controlled and normalized, which made Melmoth a poisonous and antinational book. This contribution intends to lay bare the mechanisms governing the formal organization of the text, in order to understand what kind of hell the Blakeian energy governing the novel could lead to.