Il gioco dei nomi e "il gioco dei regni". La tragica inquietudine dei Sereni

ABSTRACT. (The names game and Il gioco dei regni) This paper examines the “names game” in Clara Sereni’s genealogical novel Il gioco dei regni (The Play of Kingdoms) that Alberto Asor Rosa deems «one of the most beautiful Italian books of the last twenty years.» The paper shows how names, pseudonyms and nicknames express familiar, friendly and sentimental relationships and either enhance or diminish personal, ideological and linguistic differences. The names in the text are based on names in real documents; diaries, letters, original deeds, police reports, prison files. New research from archives that the author herself had already exploited gives context to the tension between the fictional and historical dimensions. The essay also shows how the names game involves the author: she uses the etymology and the analysis of names as a narrative resource; at the same time through the use of names, she re-establishes the broken relationships in the familiar, political and cultural story that she tells.