Abstract
The article aims to apply anthropological interpretive tools to study literature, to find a new approach for literary critics. In particular, the French ethnocritique method is used to read Giovanni Verga’s masterpiece, I Malavoglia. As a naturalistic work, the novel should maintain a certain distance from the world it describes; actually the radical alternative of mythical and historical time, which characterizes I Malavoglia, can be considered as a translation of the writer’s autobiographical distress. The conflict between mythical past and progressive time, which is the novel’s main theme, coincides with Verga’s existential and cultural otherness: as a Sicilian who escaped his own original world and then came back, he is inside and both outside that world; he can restore his divided self only by the power of literary metaphor. By way of a hermeneutical analysis that combines a close textual reading with constant attention to the social, cultural and symbolical context, the article provides a complete view of the relation between writer’s life and his novel.
Notes
1 Pubblicato in Letteratura, 17–18, 1955: 68–89, con il titolo ‘Il mondo popolare nei Malavoglia’.
2 Il 21 settembre 1875 scrive all’editore Treves: ‘Vi manderò […] in seguito Padron ‘Ntoni, il bozzetto marinaresco di cui conoscete il principio […]. Avrei potuto finirlo e mandarvelo anche prima, ma vi confesso che rileggendolo mi è parso dilavato, e ho cominciato a rifarlo di sana pianta, e vorrei riuscire più semplice, breve ed efficace’ (Verga, Citation1980: 76).
3 Lettera a Caterina Di Mauro del 22 marzo 1874 (Verga, Citation1980: 61; ora anche in Verga, Citation2011: LXXXVIII).
4 Lettera a Caterina Di Mauro del 24 gennaio 1874 (Verga, Citation1980: 50–51; ora anche in Verga, Citation2011: LXI).
5 Lettera a Caterina Di Mauro del 19 marzo 1874 (Verga, Citation1980: 60; ora anche in Verga, Citation2011: LXXXVII).
6 Lettera a Caterina Di Mauro del 21 giugno 1874 (Verga, Citation1980: 64; ora anche in Verga, Citation2011: CXXV).
7 Lettera a Caterina Di Mauro del 9 aprile 1974 (Verga, Citation2011: XCIV).