«La beauté dans le désespoir». Niobe e la madre di Cecilia

In this paper we propose an intertextual analysis around the episode of Cecilia’s mother in « I promessi sposi », especially considering the novel « Corinne, ou l’Italie » (1807). The woman who appears in the episode of Manzoni’s novel hides the physiognomy of the mythological Niobe, found in the novel by Madame de Staël and in other texts that Manzoni might have read before writing the famous episode, from Ovid’s « Metamorphosis » to the works of August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schiller.