Emancipazione economica e alienazione simbolica. Sul lavoro nel Mastro-don Gesualdo di Verga

The article examines the portrayal of work in Giovanni Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo on both a material and a symbolic level. Drawing on Riccardo Castellana’s recent study and building upon the strand of Verga scholarship focused on the author’s ideology, this study offers an interpretation of the novel by focusing on key themes related to labour. As a cornerstone of an emerging bourgeois class striving for hegemony, labour serves as a metonym for modernity and its consequences. Specifically, the article explores the manifestations of work within the novel by analysing the internal conflicts of its protagonist – who ultimately pays the price for economic success at the cost of his sense of self.