Overview

This book explores Darwinism in modern Italian literature. In the years between Italy’s unification (1861) and the rise of fascism, many writers gave voice to anxieties connected with the ideas of evolution and progress. This study shows how Italian authors borrowed and reworked a scientific vocabulary to write about the contradictions and the contrasting tensions of Italy’s cultural and political-economic modernization. It focuses, above all, on novels by Italo Svevo, Federico De Roberto and Luigi Pirandello. The analysis centers on such topics as the struggle against adverse social conditions in capitalistic society, the risk of failing to survive the struggle itself, the adaptive issues of individuals uprooted from their family and work environments, the concerns about the heredity of maladapted characters. Accordingly, the book also argues that the hybridization and variation of both narrative forms and collective mindsets describes the modernist awareness of the cultural complexity experienced in Italy and Europe at this time.  

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9783031188527

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Reviews

“Sartori’s volume invites us to investigate more deeply and more broadly the reification of life and the theatricalization of the world as something not only characteristic of Pirandello but of the modern(ist) novel as a whole. It is probably the Derridean lens used by Sartori to read the Italian inetti that is the most profitable tool to inherit from this work. Through this deconstructionist lens, Sartori shows the importance … to shed new light on universally acknowledged truths.” (Lorenzo Mecozzi, Annali d'italianistica, Vol. 41, 2023)

"“The Struggle for Life and the Modern Italian Novel, 1859-1925 is an erudite and original book by a thoughtful reader of Italian and European modernity. … this is a precious volume … . Sartori’s brilliant overview of Darwin’s theories and of their aftermath within the European context should become a point of reference for our understanding of this pivotal epoch in European history ... ."" (Silvia Valisa, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, May 3, 2024) “Sartori’s volume invites us to investigate more deeply and more broadly the reification of life and the theatricalization of the world as something not only characteristic of Pirandello but of the modern(ist) novel as a whole. It is probably the Derridean lens used by Sartori to read the Italian inetti that is the most profitable tool to inherit from this work. Through this deconstructionist lens, Sartori shows the importance … to shed new light on universally acknowledged truths.” (Lorenzo Mecozzi, Annali d'italianistica, Vol. 41, 2023)"

Author Information

Andrea Sartori teaches Italian and European Culture at Politecnico of Milan, Italy, for the year 2022-23. He is the author of Scompenso (2010) and L’inventalavoro (2012). He co-edited Perspectives on Italian Difference: Italian Differences in Perspective (2018) and Terry Pinkard’s La Fenomenologia di Hegel in Italian (2013). 

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