Dialogo con Psiche (1909–10) has received little consideration from scholars of Sibilla Aleramo; yet, this is a work of paramount importance for understanding Aleramo’s approach to knowledge and hence gaining a deeper insight into her subsequent autobiographical novels. For Aleramo, knowledge cannot be separated from the knowledge of the Self that she calls soul. Love is the key that opens the door to that wisdom. This essay explores the triangulation between knowledge, love, and soul in Dialogo con Psiche, which is the foundation of Aleramo’s personal experience as represented in her autobiographical works; in so doing, the essay also clarifies the writer’s strong relationship with Platonism, a relationship to which scholars of Aleramo might want to pay renewed attention.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Alfano, B., (2025), "A Platonic Look at Herself: Knowledge, Love, and Soul in Sibilla Aleramo’s Dialogo con Psiche", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Alfano, Barbara. "A Platonic Look at Herself: Knowledge, Love, and Soul in Sibilla Aleramo’s Dialogo con Psiche." Quaderni d'italianistica 39 (1): 2019. 153-172. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v39i1.32637. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.