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Giovanni Verga

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Giovanni Verga
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(born Sept. 2, 1840, Catania, Sicily — died Jan. 27, 1922, Catania) Italian writer, the most important of the verismo (realist) school of novelists. Born to a family of landowners, Verga left Sicily for the mainland, where he remained until 1893. There he developed a writing style noted for its terse accuracy and intensity of feeling. His best works include the short stories of Little Novels of Sicily (1883), the novels The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), and the play Cavalleria rusticana (1884; "Rustic Chivalry"), which became immensely popular when it was adapted as an opera by Pietro Mascagni. His influence on the post-World War II generation of Italian Neorealist writers was particularly marked (see Neorealism).

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Giovanni Verga
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Verga, Giovanni (jōvän'nē vĕr'gä), 1840-1922, Italian novelist, b. Sicily. He abandoned the study of law for literature and wrote several novels of passion in the style of the French realists. His later works, written in a different style, are marked by simplicity and strict accuracy. They deal with the Sicilian middle class and sympathetically treat the poverty and struggles of the peasantry. Verga's technique gave rise to the term verismo, denoting the realistic school. He is considered one of the outstanding writers of modern Europe and has been compared with Flaubert and Zola. His works include Cavalleria rusticana (1880, tr. with other stories in the same volume by D. H. Lawrence, 1928), I Malavoglia (1881, tr. The House by the Medlar Tree, 1890), Novelle rusticane (1883, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, Little Novels of Sicily, 1925), and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, 1923). The dramatization of Cavalleria rusticana was produced in 1884, and Mascagni's opera, based on it, in 1890. A stage version of La lupa, one of his best stories, was produced in 1896 (tr. The Wolf Hunt, 1921).

Bibliography

See study by G. L. Lucente (1981).

Wikipedia: Giovanni Verga
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Giovanni Verga

Born 2 September 1840(1840-09-02)
Catania, Sicily, Italy1
Died 27 January 1922 (aged 81)
Catania, Sicily, Italy
Occupation Writer
Literary movement realist

Giovanni Verga (2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story Cavalleria Rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia.

The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. He began writing in his teens, producing the largely unpublished historical novel Amore e Patria (Love and Country); then, although nominally studying law at the University of Catania, he used money his father had given him to publish his I Carbonari della Montagna (The Carbonari of the Mountain) in 1861 and 1862. This was followed by Sulle Lagune (In the Lagoons) in 1863.

Meanwhile, Verga had been serving in the Catania National Guard (1860-64), after which he travelled to Florence several times, settling there in 1869.

He moved to Milan in 1872, where he developed his new approach, characterized by the use of dialogue to develop character, which resulted in his most significant works. In 1880 his story collection Vita dei Campi (Life in the Fields), (including Fantasticheria, La Lupa, and Pentolacchia) most of which were about rural Sicily, came out; it included the Cavalleria Rusticana, which was adapted for the theatre and later the libretto of the Mascagni opera. Verga's short story, "Malaria", was one of the first literary depictions of the disease.

He then embarked on a projected series of five novels, but only completed two, I Malavoglia and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), the latter of which was the last major work of his literary career. Both are widely recognized as masterpieces.

In 1894 Verga moved back to the house he was born in. In 1920 he was elected a senator. He died of a cerebral thrombosis in 1922.

Contents

Bibliography

Verga's house-museum

Novels

  • Love and homeland (1856-1857)
  • Carbonari of the mountain (1861-1862)
  • On the lagoons (1862-1863)
  • A sinner (1866)
  • History of Capinera (1871)
  • Eva (1873)[1]
  • Eros (1875)
  • Royal tiger (1875)
  • I Malavoglia (1881)
  • Elena's husband (1882)
  • Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889)
  • From your to my (1905)

Short stories

  • Nedda (1874)

Spring and other story (1877)

  • Spring
  • The tail of the devil
  • X
  • Certain subjects
  • The stories of the Trezza's castle

The life of the fields (1880)

  • Rustic Chivalry

External links

Notes

  1. ^ Digitami

External links


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
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