Giacinta, Giustina e le altre: Luigi Capuana tra fotografia e nevrosi di fine secolo

The paper intends to investigate the effects of a singular plot, which occurred in the century of Darwin, between photography, psychiatry and literary invention. In particular, the object of investigation is the narrative work of Luigi Capuana - from Profili di donne (1877) to the Marquis of Roccaverdina (1901) - in which the reflections of the application of photography can be seen both from the unknown sphere of human passions, women in particular, both to the occult world of the spirit that lives beyond death. In the decades in which the realist experience is consummated and the interest in the spirit is rediscovered, the female characters of Capuanian fiction reflect in an exemplary way the results of scientific research in the psychiatric field which saw an anomaly in the hysterical and insane evolution in the species. The alienated, the scientist, the passionate, the doctor, the hysteric, are therefore the narrative figures through which Capuana, amateur photographer, contributes to the construction of a precise cultural imaginary.