In need of an ending: Closure and structural incompleteness in Pirandello's retrospective novels

Abstract

This essay discusses the role of retrospectivity in three of Luigi Pirandello's novels: The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), Shoot! (1915), and One, No One, One Hundred Thousand (1926). While all these novels comprise different forms of retrospective narration, the different ways in which retrospectivity is used in each of the novels can shed light on the evolution of Pirandello's poetics. I argue that Pirandello employs retrospectivity to thematize the metaphysical crisis experienced by the modern subject and their demand for meaning in a world without God. In all the novels, the possibility of finding meaning is translated into the possibility of conceiving life as a meaningful plot. Over the years, however, Pirandello has moved on from such a possibility and abandoned the use of a retrospective structure. While The Late Mattia Pascal and One, No One, One Hundred Thousand can still offer a meaningful plot and therefore may present a retrospective concluded structure, in Shoot!, the retrospective structure implodes, suggesting that Pirandello has renounced the possibility of framing the life of his characters through a narrative frame.

Keywords

retrospectivity Italian modernism theory of humor Luigi Pirandello retrospective novel

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Andreoli

(ed) (1997) Taccuino segreto. Mondadori.

Baldi

(2006) Pirandello e il romanzo: Scomposizione umoristica e distrazione. Liguori.

Barilli

(1976) Il romanzo di Pirandello e il discorso retorico. In: Lauretta

(eds) Il “romanzo” di Pirandello. Palumbo, pp.209–224.

Barilli

(1986) Pirandello: Una rivoluzione culturale. Mursia.

Benjamin

(2007) The storyteller: Reflections on the works of Nikolai Leskov. In: Benjamin

(ed) Illuminations. Schocken Books, pp.83–109.

Benjamin

(2008) The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Bouissy

Renucci

(1976) Le innovazioni nella narrativa italiana del ‘900. In: Branca

et al. (eds) Innovazioni tematiche espressive e linguistiche della letteratura italiana del Novecento: atti dell'VIII Congresso dell'Associazione internazionale per gli studi di lingua e letteratura italiana, New York, 25–28 aprile 1973. L.S. Olschki, pp.97–152.

Brooks

(1992) Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Harvard University Press.

Castellana

(2018) Finzione e memoria: Pirandello modernista. Liguori editore.

10.

Cohn

(1978) Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton University Press.

11.

De Castris

(1992) Storia di Pirandello. Laterza.

12.

Di Benedetto

(1988) L’eclissi del romanzo di formazione: falsa libertà e eticità nel Fu Mattia Pascal. In: Borsellino

(eds) Lo Strappo nel cielo di carta: Introduzione alla lettura del Fu Mattia Pascal. Nuova Italia scientifica, pp.107–124.

13.

Dombroski

(1978) Le totalità dell’artificio: Ideologia e forma nel romanzo di Pirandello. Liviana editrice.

14.

Ercolino

(2014) The Novel-Essay: 1884–1947. Palgrave Macmillan.

15.

Ganeri

(2001) Pirandello romanziere. Rubbettino.

16.

Gioanola

(1997) Pirandello, la follia. Jaca book.

17.

Harrison

(1992) Essayism: Conrad, Musil, and Pirandello. Johns Hopkins University Press.

18.

Harrison

(1999) Regicide, parricide, and tyrannicide in Il fu Mattia Pascal: Stealing from the father to give to the son. In: Biasin

Gieri

(eds) Luigi Pirandello: Contemporary Perspectives. University of Toronto Press, pp.189–213.

19.

Kermode

(2000) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction: With a New Epilogue. Oxford University Press.

20.

Lukács

(1970) “Narrate or Describe?” in Writer and Critic, and Other Essays. Merlin Press.

21.

Lukács

(1971) The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. M.I.T. Press.

22.

Luperini

(1990) L'allegoria del moderno: Saggi sull'allegorismo come forma artistica del moderno e come metodo di conoscenza. Editori riuniti.

23.

Luperini

(1999) Pirandello. Laterza.

24.

Mazzacurati

(1998) Stagioni dell'apocalisse: Verga, Pirandello, Svevo. Einaudi.

25.

Mazzoni

(2017) Theory of the Novel. Harvard University Press.

26.

Mecozzi

(2024) The humor of retrospectivity: Dissolution and resistance in The Late Mattia Pascal and One, No One, One Hundred Thousand. PSA XXXVI: 56–83.

27.

Micali

(2002) Miti e riti del moderno: Marinetti, Bontempelli, Pirandello. Le Monnier.

28.

Miccichè

(2013) Il problema dell'umorismo in Pirandello. Giraldi.

29.

Moretti

(1987) The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. Verso.

30.

Pirandello

(1987) The Late Mattia Pascal. Hippocrene.

31.

Pirandello

(1990) One, No One, and One Hundred-thousand. Eridanos.

32.

Pirandello

(2005) Shoot!: The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, cCinematograph Operator. University of Chicago Press.

33.

Pirandello

(2006) Saggi e interventi (ed Taviani

). Mondadori.

34.

Savettieri

(2012) Forme dell’identità nella narrativa modernista: Il caso di Zeno. In: Luperini

Tortora

(eds) Sul modernismo italiano. Liguori, pp.155–181.

35.

Sereni

(1995) Poesie. Mondadori.

36.

Simmel

(2011) The Philosophy of Money. Routledge Classics.

37.

Stocchi-Perucchio

(1991) Pirandello and the Vagaries of Knowledge: A Reading of Il fu Mattia Pascal. Anma Libri.

38.

Svevo

(2001) Zeno’s Conscience (translation by W Weaver). Alfred A. Knopf.

39.

Tobin

(1978) Time and the Novel: The Genealogical Imperative. Princeton University Press.