L'etnologo e il poeta. Ernesto De Martino e la letteratura dell'apocalisse borghese

The article gives an overview of Ernesto De Martino’s reflection on literature. Strictly connected with his concept of crisis, literature, in De Martino’s theoretical model, is the expression of irrationalist issues, the symptom of bourgeois world’s illness. The anthropologist analyzes several 19th century novels and in particular Jean-Paul Sartre’s La nausea, to demonstrate that they represent a cultural apocalypse, the ongoing collapsing of a social and cultural world. This is the main purpose in De Martino’s studying literary subjects, but his interpretation consequently opens a relevant debate: since, in De Martino’s theory, crisis must be always overcome by a transcending power, what about a possible overcoming in literary apocalypses? The answer to this question involves both political and anthropological issues and sheds new light on the applicability of an original transdiciplinary paradigm for literary studies.