The fortune of the gothic novel in Italy

In dealing with this work, my aim was not so much to dwell upon the general characteristics of the gothic novel, as to underline the influences that this genre and its natural heir, the English historical novel, had on Italian literature.
For this reason, the organization of this work was structured in order to introduce the reader to the gothic novel in its most characteristic aspects, and this function was completed in the first chapter. Afterwards, in the second chapter, I wanted to dwell upon those authors, Byron, Shelley and Scott in particular, who gave a significant contribution, through their works, to the spreading of this genre. In the third chapter I compared the original versions and the Italian translations of gothic novels, from a formal and a semantic point of view. In order to reach this aim, I selected some significant samples of the pages I considered the most representative of the particular stylistic characteristics of this genre.
In the fourth chapter, which, in a more specific way responses to the aims of this work, I gave an overall picture of the presence of gothic elements in Italian literature, and in particular in the historical novel. For this reason I preferred to dwell upon the greatest representatives of this genre, like Manzoni, Bazzoni and D’Azeglio, preferring to leave out the great number of imitations, most of all with bad results, by minor authors.
In the last chapter, I put my attention on Italian criticism to the gothic novel, summarizing and quoting, where possible, the opinions of the most important scholars on this subject, in order to highlight the differences, sometimes substantial ones, in their way to deal with this genre.