Fantastico e ideologia

Due capitoli per la storia di un equivoco

Abstract

For decades, Italian critics have regarded the fantastic as the disengaged and escapist genre par excellence. This article investigates two episodes in this long history: a critic’s essay and a writer’s novel. While the critic, Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, belongs to the group of interpreters who consider the fantastic a form of escapism without an authentic grip on reality, the writer, Giancarlo Buzzi, in his novel Il senatore (The Senator) shows how the fantastic can become an effective instrument of ideological critique of the capitalist and industrial system.