Godioli Alberto - Laughter From Realism to Modernism: Misfits and Humorists in Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda

Editorial Committee

Professor Simon Gilson, University of Warwick (General Editor)

Dr Francesca Billiani, University of Manchester

Dr Manuele Gragnolati, Somerville College, Oxford

Dr Catherine Keen, University College London

Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford

Founding Editors

Professor Zygmunt Baraski and Professor Anna Laura Lepschy

In the light of growing academic interest in Italy and the reorganization of many university courses in Italian along interdisciplinary lines, this book series, founded now continuing under the Legenda imprint, aims to bring together different scholarly perspectives on Italy and its culture. Italian Perspectives publishes books and collections of essays on any period of Italian literature, language, history, culture, politics, art, and media, as well as studies which take an interdisciplinary approach and are methodologically innovative.

Appearing in this Series

21. The Printed Media in Fin-de-sicle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers, ed. by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns

22. Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda, by Deborah Amberson

23. Remembering Aldo Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder, ed. by Ruth Glynn and Giancarlo Lombardi

24. Disrupted Narratives: Illness, Silence and Identity in Svevo, Pressburger and Morandini, by Emma Bond

25. Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment, by George Corbett

26. Edoardo Sanguineti: Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde, ed. by Paolo Chirumbolo and John Picchione

27. The Tradition of the Actor-Author in Italian Theatre, ed. by Donatella Fischer

28. Leopardis Nymphs: Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny, by Fabio A. Camilletti

29. Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture, by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi

30. Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Cultures Appropriation of a Baroque Genius, by Laura Rorato

31. The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. by Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson

32. Rome Eternal: The City As Fatherland, by Guy Lanoue

33. The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in Minor Italian Literature, by Simone Brioni

34. Laughter from Realism to Modernism: Misfits and Humorists in Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda, by Alberto Godioli

35. Pasolini after Dante: The Divine Mimesis and the Politics of Representation, by Emanuela Patti

Managing Editor

Dr Graham Nelson, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK

www.legendabooks.com

This study is based on my doctoral thesis, defended at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2012; it has been completed during my Newton International Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (201314), which generously supported its publication. I am particularly grateful to my doctoral supervisors, Salvatore Silvano Nigro and Raffaele Donnarumma, and to my postdoctoral mentor, Federica Pedriali, for their constant advice and encouragement over the years. My research is also greatly indebted to the feedback and support of many other people; special mentions are due to Valentino Baldi, Federico Bertoni, Lina Bolzoni, Alberto Casadei, Paola Casella, Mathijs Duyck, Cristina Savettieri, and Francesco Venturi.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr Graham Nelson, Managing Editor of Legenda, and to Professor Simon Gilson, for their valuable suggestions and their guidance throughout the making of this book. Several useful comments were provided by my copy editor, Richard Correll, and by the anonymous reader for Legenda, to whom I am also extremely grateful.