Naturalismo e anacronismo. Appunti etnocritici su I Malavoglia di Verga

The article aims to apply anthropological interpretive tools to study literature, to find a new approach for literary critics. In particular, the French ethnocritique method is used to read Giovanni Verga’s masterpiece, I Malavoglia. As a naturalistic work, the novel should maintain a certain distance from the world it describes; actually the radical alternative of mythical and historical time, which characterizes I Malavoglia, can be considered as a translation of the writer’s autobiographical distress. The conflict between mythical past and progressive time, which is the novel’s main theme, coincides with Verga’s existential and cultural otherness: as a Sicilian who escaped his own original world and then came back, he is inside and both outside that world; he can restore his divided self only by the power of literary metaphor. By way of a hermeneutical analysis that combines a close textual reading with constant attention to the social, cultural and symbolical context, the article provides a complete view of the relation between writer’s life and his novel.