The literary image of Naples, “Capital of the South” that sees periodic
alternations of crisis and splendor in the arts, is certainly
dichotomous: on the one hand the locus amoenus in which
inventiveness flourishes and different cultural traditions intersect and
live together, on the other the symbolic place of immense social
disparities, an outbreak of epidemics and the cradle of a lax and
reactionary mentality. The image used by Benedetto Croce to define this
city, "a paradise inhabited by devils" dates back to the Middle Ages,
and is denied from time to time by the authors who intend to build a
positive myth of Napoletanità, but already in the early 20^th
century , and then especially in the period from 1943 (to the present
day), there are increasingly critical accents towards this image, which
result - more than in hatred or in contempt for the city and its
inhabitants - in a tendency to move away from Naples, to abandon a
contradictory reality that does not solve its problems, but like a
virgin forest grows back destroying every element of progress. The
writers considered for this reading are: Carlo Bernari, Anna Maria
Ortese, Raffaele La Capria, Fabrizia Ramondino, Ermanno Rea, Giuseppe
Montesano, Elena Ferrante.