From Letter to Literature: Giovanni Verga, Matilde Serao and Late Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Fiction

In the past two decades, epistolary fiction has drawn much attention in the field of literary criticism, especially within the realms of French and English literature.² The same cannot be said for Italian studies, which have neglected this aspect of Italian literary production.³ Arguably, the main reason for this neglect can be found in the lack of a rich tradition of epistolary fiction in Italy comparable to that of other European countries. While there may not be a vast production of novels written in epistolary form in Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century, the question of why several authors, including two of the most popular writers of their time—Giovanni Verga and Matilde Serao—employed this genre for their literary production remains to be adequately addressed.

An analysis of what critics have defined as "postal culture"—that is, the rise in the nineteenth century of social and cultural practices developed around the letter—might shed some light on this question.⁴ The starting point of my inquiry is the institutional and cultural transformation of post-unification Italy, namely the nationalization of the postal service and the growth of the printed media, both of which popularized the use of the letter and of letter-writing. Critics have traditionally focused on a diachronic study of letter-writing, emphasizing its historically contingent nature—"un complemento all'educazione intellettuale che procede di pari passo con la disciplina dei costumi" (Zarri xvii)—but not enough attention has been paid to the relationship existing between fictional and real letter productions. To what extent can the Italian epistolary fiction produced in the second half of the nineteenth century be considered part of a cultural phenomenon connected to letter-writing, identified by critics as specific to a century in which people not only used the letter more than ever before for their communication but also created "autentici monumenti epistolari" (Tellini 10)? And if, as in the case of Verga and Serao, authors intended to write their epistolary fiction in a realistic vein, what role did the fictional letter play in the representation of reality ("rappresentazione del vero")—a narrative pursuit that informed so much of the literary debates and productions of late nineteenth-century Italy?

Starting from the late 1870s, Italian culture experienced a new dynamism as a result of the "più ricca complessità dei destinatari; non soltanto gli addetti agli apparati pubblici, ma soprattuto il nuovo ceto medio del terziario e dei servizi, portatore di una nuova domanda non solo di formazione, ma pure di acculturazione" (Tobia 435). As the number of readers grew, writers became increasingly aware of the new demands placed on them by the growing cultural industry. Already in the middle of the nineteenth century, Carlo Tenca had admitted, a bit disappointedly but also realistically, that "Adesso non è più il tempo, in cui un ingegno straordinario possa creare da solo una letteratura: questa deve uscire dal concetto comune della moltitudine. La condizione stessa del letterato, emancipandosi dalla protezione dei grandi, e dipendente invece da un vasto popolo di lettori, impedisce le solitarie astrazioni, le lunghe e pazienti meditazioni, e lo rende servo dei capricci e della versatilità del pubblico" (93). By the late nineteenth century, the relative "multitude" of the readership was not only a reality, but a necessity—if not a desire—as both authors and publishers depended on sales for their livelihood. The close relationship between nineteenth-century journalism and literature—especially in the second part of the century—is representative of the way in which writers attempted to mediate their literary ambitions with the new realities of the burgeoning cultural industry.

The epistolary fiction produced during the second half of the nineteenth century may be considered part of this cultural transformation—a shift in the fictional representation of the letter from being an emblem of solitary meditation to a vehicle of public mediation, thus marking a change in focus from individual order to social interaction. While historically the fictional letter has been interpreted as a strategy for delving into the characters' psychology or for...