«... per un'opera di misericordia». Misericordia e perdono nei «Promessi sposi»

[Autom. eng. transl.] Examined from the point of view of mercy, literary works, or at least some of them, have a dual nature: on the one hand, they can take it as content, as an object of description (think of the large number of works of mercy described, for example , in the Promessi sposi); on the other, they themselves are configured as works of mercy in progress, so much so that they can postulate that the literary work is in itself a work of mercy (of course not all, and of course under certain conditions). To cite only two examples, it should be remembered that Divine Comedy and Promessi sposi were written (explicitly the first, implicitly the latter) for removere viventes de statu miseriae et perducere ad statum felicitatis, thus explicitly proposing at least to console the afflicted and to advise the doubters (the comedy is a veritable guide to the perplexed; and perhaps the betrothed are not?). Consequently, the scholar of literature also has a twofold task: to investigate the ways in which literary works describe, but above all, concretely practice mercy; to transmit to the students and, more generally to all those who approach them works, the truth of mercy described and practiced therein, reproducing, in a way suitable to the interlocutors, the merciful characteristics. Reflection on mercy and good practice of mercy are discussed below in the course of some reflections, between literature and theology, which cross the Comedy and the betrothed.