The thesis aims to analyse through a linguistic approach the stylistic tendencies oriented towards a more or less intense complication of the text in a set of narrative works written by three Sicilian authors of the second half of the 20th century: Stefano D’Arrigo, Vincenzo Consolo and Leonardo Sciascia. The corpus is composed by D’Arrigo’s Horcynus Orca (1975); Consolo’s La ferita dell'aprile (1963), Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (1976), Nottetempo, casa per casa (1992); Sciascia’s Il consiglio d’Egitto (1963), Todo modo (1974) and Il cavaliere e la morte (1988). To describe the stylistic complexity of these texts, critics have often employed the term ‘baroque’. By observing the linguistic phenomena that characterise the aforementioned novels, the research provides a solid empirical basis for the use of the stylistic term, in order to better test its hermeneutic value.