ANALYSIS - La monaca di Monza

Right from the start, the omnivorous reader cannot disregard the exceptional qualities of the character he is going to meet: one who is addressed with a different language from the common people generally inhabiting a monastery. Indeed, while he expects to meet a nun, he is introduced to a “signora”, a lexical choice repeated over and over again thus creating a climatic suspense which needs to be satisfied.

What fills curiosity on the part of the intelligent reader is not la signora's hierarchic position in the monastery, but rather her uniqueness: her being different and everybody knows that it is always difference to create curiosity for anybody whatsoever, whether it is a fictional character or not.

The intelligent reader understands the lexical focus of the introductory opinion about the nun is the word signora” because it is very frequent in the introductive paragraph.
The purpose is to create a mystery around the nun and therefore to give to the reader a reason for go deeper into the narration. At the same time all the information provides by the strategy of the reputation tells the intelligent reader a lot about the mentality of the period. Accordingly, people coming for aristocracy where considered more important and relevant than ordinary people.
“tutto il paese la chiama con quel nome” is an additional way to underline her peculiar status inside the monastery, is not something we expect to be refer to a nun. So, she is an unusual woman.
The idea of the noun being totally different from the common nun is underlined by the expression “mai”. Therefore, the introductory idea of the nun that she is an unique woman, somebody who was never ever in a monastery before.

In my opinion, therefore, the reader may be annoyed to read about all the information concerning her family, the dynasty she belongs to because having she /he already read eight chapters of the novel he/she cannot have missed the plenty references the narrator makes when he juxtaposes social status to power.

The intelligent reader is one able to make sense of all the strategies the narration relies on to create a reason to go on reading about la monaca and that's why even the title of the woman is interesting since she is not only "monaca" but she is "la monaca di Monza", where there are two determiners to underline /focus on/highlight her peculiarity: "la", a definite article which refers to a specific person, used to convey a peculiar definition, and "di Monza", the place inhabited by the powerful, the ones that rule the region, the Spanish ones. Not only is the narrator great to introduce the character by creating a lack of information in a very intelligent way because the nun's peculiarity or uniqueness is given through general reputation but without specific information. Moreover, the reader is given more and more reasons to find out about the nun, it is as if the narrator by using this strategy, which is an indirect one, makes the reader meet the nun by means of the words of the boatman.  He creates a climatic curiosity, not a simple curiosity, but some curiosity that grows in time and space.