Social Awareness and Political Awakening Among the Peasants and Fishermen of Sicily as Reflected in Giovanni Verga's novelle

"The present study of Giovanni Verga and his time, great hopes and bitter disappointments, uncommon courage and hopeless despair, heroic optimism against impossible odds as manifested in Verga's characters ... reflects extensive scholarly research into various sources, mostly well-known literary critics who have sought to cast more light into Verga's work, from his contemporary era to our present time ... The author and her sources maintain that Verga's work was shaped by his early experience in his native island of Sicily where he, the son of local nobility, grew up among the poor, "the doomed" he understood and loved so much. It was also shaped by his early travels to northern, more sophisticated Italian cities, as evidenced by his early romantic, even sentimental writings ... Worthy of special attention is Verga's lengthy experience in Milan where he lived from 1872 to 1893. It was there that Verga met Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga and other bohemian artists of the so-called Scapigliatura. Members of the Scapigliatura stubbornly refused to conform to the political and economic situation of the newly founded Kingdom of Italy where only the elite were making progress. The rest, the commoners, were physically and psychologically doomed like the new characters of Verga's short stories first, and novels later ..." - (from the Commendatory Preface) Professor Egidio Lunardi, Lake Erie College, Ohio

Commendatory Preface by Egidio Lunardi
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Chronology of Giovanni Verga's Life and Era
Introduction to Giovanni Verga and His World
Chapter I: Literature and Politics: Verga's Art for Social Justice
Chapter II: I Macchiaioli: Painters of Italian Veristic Life 1850-1900
Chapter III: Verismo or Italian Realism
Chapter IV: Verismo vs. Naturalism: Verga's Ideas on the New Novel
Chapter V: Historical Background of Nineteenth Century Italy
Chapter VI: First Stage of Verga's Vision of Humanity's Poor: Lack of Social Awareness and Political Awakening Among the Peasantry of Sicily
Chapter VII: The Second Stage of Verga's Vision of Humanity's Poor: Social Awareness and Political Awakening Among the Peasantry of Sicily
Conclusion
Appendix: Complete List of Giovanni Verga's Novelle
Notes
Bibliography
Index