I FARMACI PSICOTROPI COME STRUMENTI TERAPEUTICI E SUICIDARI NEL ROMANZO ITALIANO DA VERGA A PAVESE.

The increasing therapeutic use of psychotropic drugs in the last decades of the 19th century led a number ofitalian storytellers tointroduce them to the plots Of their novels. Verga, D 'Anminzio and Serao were among the first, followed by Nbtari, Svevo and Papini, to continue with De CBspedes and Pavese. In these authors psychotropic drugs, -opium, morphine, chloral, cocaine and veronal - were used in a therapeutic context, but even more often as suicidal instruments. Especially in the latter case, the slow course of intoxication allowed the author to broaden the narrative at his will. These uses of psychotropic drugs are compared with the voluptuary one, which only later enters the Italian novel in accordance with the slow infiltration of such use in the Italian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]