The infection of literature

This essay examines two narrative texts by Livia De Stefani through the lens of gendered violence, focusing on its symbolic and epistemic dimensions and on how violence operates as a spectral and culturally legitimized presence within literary discourse. Through close readings of the short stories ‘Fughe nel palazzo’ [‘Escapes in the Palace’] and ‘Il marchese di Fontesecca’ [‘The Marquis Fontesecca’], the analysis reveals how De Stefani employs estrangement, fantastic motifs, and non-mimetic modes to expose and deconstruct hegemonic paradigms of representation. The essay argues that De Stefani’s writing not only foregrounds the invisible frameworks that sustain symbolic and epistemic violence – particularly in relation to gender – but also reclaims literary writing as a critical tool for reconfiguring models of world representation. In doing so, her work contributes to a broader understanding of literature’s role in mediating, legitimizing, and potentially dismantling hegemonic paradigms. This article was published open access under a CC BY-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ .