Italian Long Fiction (Critical Survey of Long Fiction)
Historical Background
It was argued by no less a figure than Giovanni Papini (1881- 1956) that Italians are less suited temperamentally to writing novels than to writing poetry, essays, and biographies. Certainly, the art of storytelling has been long esteemed in Italy; Baldassare Castiglione, in Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Courtier, 1561), listed it as one of the attributes of the perfect gentleman. It was simply the length of the fictional narrative that Italians were slow to elaborate. This lack of experimental spirit probably had more to do with...
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