Dylan Dog between catharsis and defence mechanisms: a criminological analysis

Abstract

This is not the first time that we stress fiction’s cathartic function, not only for the author of the plot, who in writing the text sublimates his own hidden and reprehensible drives, but also for the reader, who can, via defence mechanisms, repress his own fears and satisfy his desires. But is the first time that we analyze how such aims can be reached by a comics, Tiziano Sclavi’s Dylan Dog. In fact, none of the authors belonging to Italian criminological narratological school has advanced the hypothesis that a comics can excite in the reader the same passions elicited by the masterpieces of literature (as, for example, Dostoevsky and Camus’ novels): not only the needs for expiation and revenge, but also the possibility of identifying thoroughly with the criminal and living inside his mind, and in so doing of investing “oximoronically” the problem. At the same time, this comics gives us the possibility of thinking about our deepest fears, and of understanding why we have often dismissed them through denial and repression.