Many interpreters of Italo Svevo have observed that Freudian psychoanalytic theory is unable to explain the complexity of the character of Zeno Cosini, who seems in many cases to be acted out by a mimetic rather than an Oedipal type of conflict. The essay critically retraces the use that the critics of Svevo have made of Rene Girard's ideas from 1969 to the present, to propose, in the conclusions, an interpretation capable of reconciling mimetic criticism and psychoanalysis.