Per una archeologia del romanzo e del romanzesco: ipotesi su genere, origine, storia

The article reflects problematically on the idea of literary genre in relation to the novel form. It starts from the considerations of an essay by Enzo Melandri and taking into account the most recent theoretical attitudes, analyzes the possibility of tracing the historical processes of the novel through a patient archeology that helps in the recovery of textual witnesses. The intrinsic impossibility of arriving at the original source of what is fictional is hypothesized, but the very hypothesis of the fictional as a model in itself, linked to deep structures rooted in time, is proposed. From this point of view, the division of tasks between the most recent experimental research and literary criticism in the field must proceed as two phases and with two different instruments, but communicating and companions and with moments and points of contact.