Madame Bovary in Italy
Forms of realism in the late nineteenth-century Italian novel
The final thirty years of the nineteenth century – which
coincide with the first decades of the unified Italy – are the golden age of the
Italian novel: for the first time ‘Italian’ and ‘novel’ combined to produce an
“authentically Italian novel” (Asor Rosa). This extremely rich period is
characterized by lively debates and great experimentation as well as by two main
elements: the adoption, almost universally, of the realist mode, and the reference
to French literature as a model. This chapter looks, first, at Franco-Italian
cultural transfer; then it analyzes the influence that Gustave Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary had in Italian literary practice and in the rise of
Italian realism. I pay special attention to four realist novels which reworked the
bovarystic theme and explored the ‘dangers’ of novel-reading. I argue that in the
age of realism the woman reader character becomes a self-reflexive device which
enables the novel to reflect critically on its status, fictional and illusory, on
its function and its readership, real and implied. My case studies offer a sample of
the forms of realism in the late nineteenth-century Italian novel and address the
following questions: the issue of morality in the novel (Antonio Fogazzaro’s
Malombra, 1881), the ambivalent power of fiction (Matilde Serao’s
Fantasia, 1884), the
difficult legacy of romanticism (Federico De Roberto’s L’illusione,
1891), and the adoption of realist poetics (Marco Praga, La
biondina, 1893).
Article outline
- 1.The novel in post-unification Italy
- 2.Madame Bovary in Italy
- 2.1French novels: “Malombra” (1881) by Antonio Fogazzaro
- 2.2Too much imagination: “Fantasia” (1883) by Matilde Serao
- 2.3Against romanticism: “L’illusione” (1891) by Federico De Roberto
- 2.4The end of the didactic function of literature: “La biondina” (1893) by Marco Praga
- Conclusion
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Notes
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Works cited