«Gli sembrava che della Donna ce ne fosse più in quei ricordi». Felicità e libertà nel Don Giovanni in Sicilia

The essay examines Vitaliano Brancati’s Don Giovanni in Sicilia as a complex, problematic example of the Bildungsroman. Drawing on critical analyses by Franco Moretti and Domenica Perrone, it explores how the tension between happiness and freedom becomes the novel’s central axis, embodied in Giovanni Percolla’s struggle between individual autonomy and social or marital codes. The “teoria del malinteso” reveals the fragility of the illusions that sustain desire, exposing its mediated and ambivalent nature. By comparing Brancati’s work to the classical Bildungsroman model, the essay highlights how Giovanni’s journey does not culminate in a reconciliatory synthesis but rather in an open-ended, regressive conclusion. His return to Catania marks a failure of personal growth and the unresolved coexistence of contradictory drives, challenging the genre’s linear narrative arc. The dialectic between desire and reality, happiness and freedom, emerges as a critical lens to interrogate bourgeois identity and its limits. In this context, Brancati’s writing stands out for its ironic awareness, revealing his characters’ truth through the complexity and contradictions of their experience.