Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), novelist, poet, and critic, ranks as perhaps the most important Italian novelist of the 20th century. His work fuses considerations of poetic and epic representation, the theme of solitude, and the concept of myth. Cesare...

Few writers in Italy in the twentieth century rival Cesare Pavese for receiving the uninterrupted and undiminished attention of literary critics and the petulant curiosity of the mass media. Indeed, Pavese, who extensively theorized about myth, has...

Cesare Pavese's life and works demonstrate a recurrent and finally unresolved contradiction. Although in many ways Pavese was the literary figure most central to the cultural life of his times and was thus the literary spokesman, along with Elio...

25.3-4 (2000). Marco Santoro, in his short but insightful preface to the special volume of Esperienze letterarie dedicated to the memory of Cesare Pavese on the 50th anniversary of his passing, refers to Pavese as "uno degli intellettuali piu interessanti" on the...

ON AUGUST 27, 1950, two weeks short of his forty-second birthday, Cesare Pavese took an overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room in his native Turin. A suicide note, inscribed on the first page of his 1947 Dialogues with Leuco, read: "I...

Today is Friday, March 16, the 75th day of 2007. There are 290 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On March 16, 1945, during World War II, Iwo Jima was declared secured by the Allies.On this date:In A.D. 37, Roman emperor Tiberius died; he...

In the following excerpt, Thompson surveys Pavese's early poetry, finding the works a means by which Pavese examined difficult periods in his life.

In the excerpt below, Thompson discusses the events of Pavese 's life during the period of World War II and their impact on his writings. Thompson also explores Pavese 's theory—exemplified in Feria d'agosto—that experiences during a person's formative years determine his or her destiny and worldview.

In the following excerpt, Italian educator and author Biasin examines Dialogues with Leucò as an extension of Pavese himself suggesting that the theories of knowledge of self coinciding with destiny and death and the transforming of myth into destiny are the merging of Pavese' s own sufferings and anxieties with mankind's. The critic also compares Pavese's literary theories and themes in his writings to the work of other scholars.