Melania Mazzucco's L'architettrice and the Italian Historical Novel

Melania Mazzucco (b. 1966) is a critically acclaimed Italian writer whose output spans multiple genres, including historical and contemporary fiction, theatre and radio, but whose work has not attracted the attention it deserves from international scholars. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring her sophisticated use of historical fiction in her most recent novel, L’architettrice (2019). The core of the novel is a first-person narrative of the life of Plautilla Bricci (1616-1705), a unique woman and artist who succeeded both as a painter and as an architect in Baroque Rome but whose achievements have been, until recently, largely forgotten. Mazzucco blends this with a secondary third-person narrative, that of a soldier defending the Roman Republic against French troops in 1849. The two narratives are thematically connected and symbolically linked by Plautilla’s architectural masterpiece, the Villa Benedetta, which is destroyed in the battle against the French.

While arguing from the outset that L’architettrice belongs in the important tradition of the Italian historical novel, the analysis begins with an introduction which examines the establishment of that tradition with Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827, 1840) and his critique of the genre in Del romanzo storico (1850), then traces its development through the works of four significant writers: Anna Banti (Artemisia, 1948), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Il gattopardo, 1958), Elsa Morante (La storia, 1974) and Umberto Eco (Il nome della rosa, 1980). Chosen for their significance to the development of the Italian historical novel, each writer engaged with the issues raised by Manzoni, bringing innovations to the genre which influenced Mazzucco’s work.

The analysis of the text then develops along three different lines with the aim of demonstrating the sophistication of Mazzucco’s engagement with the historical novel. Firstly, the focus is directed to Mazzucco’s use of L’architettrice as a vehicle for commenting on contemporary social issues facing women in Italy and elsewhere: in this she both echoes Manzoni and follows in the footsteps of many Italian and international women writers (such as Anna Banti, Elsa Morante, Angela Carter and Pat Barker). Secondly, L’architettrice is discussed from the perspective of Ruth Glynn’s model of anti-illusionist Italian historical fiction, with an examination of Mazzucco’s metanarrative and microhistorical approaches, including an evaluation of the influence of postmodern literature on her work. Finally, Mazzucco’s novel is considered through the lens of biofiction, particularly the sub-genre of heterobiography (“fictional autobiography”) as defined by Lucia Boldrini, with a focus on issues inherent in the breaking of Philippe Lejeune’s autobiographical “pact” when an author speaks in the voice of another, historical person, as well as on Mazzucco’s blending of heterobiography and a more conventional biographical form of the novel’s secondary narrative.

This three-fold analysis confirms that Mazzucco’s novel is clearly situated within the tradition of Italian historical fiction pioneered by Manzoni, but it also reveals that in her re-imagining of the life of a woman and artist who had been erased from the official records, Mazzucco successfully integrates a microhistorical approach with a convincing commentary on contemporary issues. Ultimately, with L’architettrice she presents Plautilla Bricci’s story through a heterobiographical narrative which is both plausible and ethical.