French Literature Reviews - 2026

Beatrice Barbalato, Carmelo Bene. L'originale è infedele alla copia
Theatre and Performance

(in French below)

Carmelo Bene (1937–2002) — poet, actor, film director, playwright, writer, and critic — transformed the continuous process of the resemantization of language and culture into performances, highlighting how they are permeated by invisible citations. His works are woven with interconnected threads in an intertextual interplay that exposes how every text and character is merely the sum total of the misunderstandings that history has allowed to persist within them [quoting Lacan in reference to *langue*]. Rejecting any genealogical logic through an *à rebours* philological practice, he thrusts Penthesilea, Salome, Don Giovanni, Faust, Sade, and Lorenzaccio (the works of Carmelo Bene analyzed here) into branching pathways where characters, authors, and critics intersect. Carmelo Bene put himself on the line. As the ultimate dandy, with *sprezzatura* he modulated complex arguments, stripping away any legitimacy from approaching cultural heritage armed with rigid grammars and locked-down logic.

Carmelo Bene (1937–2002), poet, actor, director, writer, and critic, translates into performance the continuous process of the resemantization of language and culture, traversed by invisible citations. His works are woven horizontally by numerous interconnected threads in an intertextual game that lays bare how every text and character is nothing more than the sum of misunderstandings that their history has left lingering there [quoting Lacan in reference to the *langue*]. Carmelo Bene, denying all genealogical logic through an *à rebours* philological practice, casts Penthesilea, Salome, Don Giovanni, Faust, Sade, and Lorenzaccio (the works of Carmelo Bene analyzed here) into branching paths where authors and critics interfere. Carmelo Bene, the ultimate dandy, staged and staked himself with that apparent nonchalance known during the Renaissance as *sprezzatura*. The complexity of his argumentation delegitimizes and renders vain any attempt to traverse cultural heritage equipped with rigid grammars and logic.

Introduction 7
Chapter I /
Being Amphibious: Penthesilea and Achilles 11
CHAPTER II /
Salome by and from Oscar Wilde 39
CHAPTER III /
Lorenzaccio: No, I Do Not Deny History, But I Wasn't There 91
CHAPTER IV /
The Superb Ineptitude of Don Giovanni 119
CHAPTER V /
From Marlowe's Faust to Byron's Manfred 161
CHAPTER VI /
The Decadence of Cain: From Sade to Carmelo Bene's S.A.D.E. 227
Bibliography 303
Index 339

Carmelo Bene occupies a singular place in late twentieth-century Italian culture as an actor, director, playwright, and theorist whose artistic practice continually interrogated the nature of theatrical representation and cultural transmission. Readers interested in contemporary theatre studies, Italian performance history, and the practical application of deconstructive approaches to dramatic literature may find this volume relevant to their inquiries.