Luigi Pirandello is best known in the English-speaking world for his radical challenge to traditional Western theatre with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author. But theatre is just one manifestation of his experiments with language which led to a remarkable collection of novels, short stories, and essays as well as his work for a film industry then in its infancy. This study, which is based on the view that Pirandello's writings are most fruitfully discussed in a European context, takes as its starting-point the author's belief in the primacy of the literary character in a creative process which is necessarily conflictual. The book argues that all Pirandello's characters are engaged in a continual performance which transcends the genre distinction between narrative and dramatic forms. In this performance it is the spoken word in which the characters invest most heavily as they struggle to sustain an identity of their own, tell their life-stories, and assert themselves before their most prominent antagonist, the author himself.

The Unification of Italy in 1870 heralded a period of unprecedented change. While successive Liberal governments pursued imperial ventures and took Italy into World War One on the Allied side, on the domestic front technological advance, the creation of a national transport network, the expansion of state education, internal migration to cities and the rise of political associations all contributed to the rapid expansion of the print industry and the development of new and highly diversified reading publics. Drawing on publishers archives, letters, diaries, and printed material, this book provide the most up-to-date research into the printed media books, magazines and journals in Italy between 1870 and 1914. With essays on publishers and reading communities, the professionalization of the role of journalist and writer, children s literature, book illustrations, and printed media in colonial territories among others, this book is intended for those with interests in cultural production and consumption and questions of nation-formation and nationhood in and outside Italy. With the contributions: Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani Introduction John Davis Media, Markets and Modernity: The Italian Case, 1870 1915 Maria Grazia Lolla Reader/Power: The Politics and Poetics of Reading in Post-Unification Italy Joseph Luzzi Verga Economicus: Language, Money, and Identity in I Malavoglia and Mastro-don Gesualdo Olivia Santovetti The Cliche of the Romantic Female Reader and the Paradox of Novelistic Illusion: Federico De Roberto s L Illusione (1891) Francesca Billiani Intellettuali militanti, funzionari e tecnologici, etica ed estetica in tre riviste fiorentine d inizio secolo: Il Regno, La Voce, e Lacerba (1903 1914) Luca Somigli Towards a Literary Modernity all italiana: A Note on F. T. Marinetti s Poesia Silvia Valisa Casa editrice Sonzogno. Mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell Italia unificata (1861 1900) Matteo Salvadore At the Borders of Dark Africa: Italian Expeditions to Ethiopia and the Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, 1867 1887 Ombretta Frau L editore delle signore: Licinio Cappelli e la narrativa femminile fra Otto e Novecento Cristina Gragnani Il lettore in copertina. Flirt rivista di splendore e declino (Primo tempo: 1897 1902) Fiorenza Weinapple Abbiamo fatto l Italia. Adesso si tratta di fare gli Italiani. Il Programma di educazione nazionale del Secolo XX Fabio Gadducci, Mirko Tavosanis Printers, Poets, Publishers and Painters: The First Years of the Giornale per i bambini John P. Welle The Magic Lantern, the Illustrated Book, and the Beginnings of the Culture Industry: Intermediality in Carlo Collodi s La lanterna magica di Giannettino