Abstract
This chapter clarifies how in the period after World War II, Italian narrative was strongly motivated by the authors’ aspiration to narrate the astonishing happenings of the war and the fight against Fascism and the Nazi occupation. Like cinematographic artists, many Italian neorealist writers, oriented toward leftist ideals, wanted to offer a testimony to the extraordinary circumstances and to express their social obligation toward the cultural reconstruction of the country. The representation of local identities by authors such as Primo Levi or Ignazio Silone and the condition of women by Anna Banti and Elsa Morante are two significant neorealist subjects briefly examined in this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
The chapter titled “Twentieth-Century Culture” in David Forgacs’s The Oxford History of Italy provides a helpful overview of the century.
- 2.
For an overview of Gramsci’s approach to the situation in southern Italy, see “Alcuni temi della questione meridionale,” published in La costruzione del partito comunista 1923–1926.
- 3.
Francesco Rosi adapted Sciascia’s work into a film with the same title, released in 1979.
- 4.
The confino was a preventive procedure similar to an internal exile. For an examination of this Fascist measure of control, see The Fascist Confino. The Regime’s Silent Weapon by Camilla Poesio.
- 5.
The novel was also revised for cinematic purposes under the direction of director Carlo Lizzani. The film, with the same title, was released in 1980.
- 6.
In their introduction to A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood offer a vibrant account of the adverse conditions of life that women experienced from the sixteenth century to contemporary times.
- 7.
For an examination of the artist’s work, see Jesse M. Locke’s Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting.
- 8.
The article “Elsa Morante” by Patrizia Acobas provides information about the writer’s life.
- 9.
Morante’s early novel Il gioco segreto (The Secret Game, 1941) presents many examples expressing the writer’s desire to escape authentic circumstances and therefore confirms this theory.
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Milli Konewko, S. (2016). Neorealism and Literature. In: Neorealism and the "New" Italy. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52416-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52416-4_4
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