A Poetics of Composition: Tarot and Storytelling. "Il castello dei destini incrociati" and "Poslednja ljubav u Carigradu" as Cases in Point

In 1962, Boris Uspenskij and Maria Lekomtseva published a study entitled "Gadanie na igral’nyh kartah kak semioticheskaja sistema“ (Divination with fortune-telling cards as a semiotic system) in which they analyzed the tarot cards divination through a semiotic perspective. Starting from this contribution, the aim of this paper is to propose an analysis of two postmodernist novels whose narrative structure is based on the use of tarot. With this purpose I will compare Italo Calvino’s "Il castello dei destini incrociati" (The Castle of Crossed Destinies, 1969) with Milorad Pavić’s "Poslednja ljubav u Carigradu" (The Last love in Constantinople, 1994), to demonstrate how and through which modalities the tarot is used to create a complex and multifaceted narrative plot in which the tarot semantic value plays an essential role.