Truth and Polemic in the Novel: On the Literature and History of the Clerical Abuse of Minors

The essay explores the representation of the pedophile priest in the his- tory of literature. This figure made its appearance in the late 19th century, thanks in particular to Octave Mirbeau and Émile Zola. For both authors, the sexual crimes were a demonstration of the damage produced by cleri- calism in the life of the French Third Republic and a phenomenon to be ex- ploited polemically to strengthen the political struggle against the Catholic school and anti-Semitism. France, however, was not the only country where the phenomenon of clerical pedophilia was echoed in literature: the same happened in Spain and in Italy. The final part of the essay explains how the representation of this problem has changed since 1968, pointing out how in recent times the explosion of new scandals has inspired works devoted to clergy abuse, including a successful novel by Hanya Yanagihara.