The works of the Italian playwright, novelist, and critic Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) generally portray Italian middle-class society. Combining relativistic thinking with a specific Pirandellian bran...
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Although his fame rests mainly on revolutionary plays such as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921; translated as Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922), Enrico IV (1922; translated as Henry ...
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In the following essay, Schlueter examines the dual nature of Pirandello's characters in Henry IV, maintaining that the protagonist is the prototype for metaphysical characters in modern drama....
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He appealed not because he flouted tradition but because his art mirrored, and put to discussion, the problems of his age. It is here that we have to see his importance; all other aspects of his work ...
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In the following excerpt, Bentley characterizes Pirandello as a pessimist who speaks for the people "who have lived through the extraordinary vicissitudes of the twentieth century, uncomprehend...
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Esslin, a prominent and sometimes controversial critic of contemporary theater, is perhaps best known for coining the term "theater of the absurd. " His The Theater of the Absurd (1961) ...
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Below, Paolucci discusses the defining characteristics of Pirandello's drama, emphasizing the dramatist's concern with depicting the nature of personality and consciousness.
The theat...
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In the essay below, Mariani examines how figures in Pirandello 's plays create their own "subjective realities. "
"Ogni fantasma … deve avere il suo drama....
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Women as objects of desire, scorn, fear, as victims or as traps; conflicts arising over pregnancy and female identity—these lie at the very heart of Pirandello's dramatic plots. The tria...
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An American playwright, poet, and novelist, Young was a prominent member of the Agrarian group of Southern poets with Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and several others, from 1928 u...
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MacCarthy was one of the foremost English literary and drama critics of the twentieth century. He served for many years on the staff of the New Statesman and edited the periodical Life and Letters. In...
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In the following review, the critic extols the collection Better Think Twice about It.
Thirteen stories from Signor Pirandello's vast output of tales are included in [Better Think Twice abou...
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In the following review of Short Stories, Seldin identifies qualities that distinguish Pirandello's successful short fiction from his weaker stories.
Most volumes of short stories involve f...
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Leo was a leading German scholar of Romance literature. In the following excerpt from an essay that was originally published in Romanistiches Jarbuch in 1963, he compares the short story "Mrs. ...
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In the following excerpt, Moestrup highlights some of the most significant stories written by Pirandello between 1910 and 1916, a period that the critic perceives as the middle phase of Pirandello�...
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An Italian-born American educator and critic specializing in Italian literature, Ragusa is the author of Narrative and Drama: Essays in Modern Italian Literature from Verga to Pasolini (1976) as well ...
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An American educator and critic, Radcliff-Umstead is the author and editor of numerous studies of Romance literature. In the following excerpt, he analyzes some of Pirandello's later short stor...
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In the following essay, Finch perceives in Pirandello's short fiction a tension between the spontaneity of life and the boundaries—both social and psychological—that humans impose...
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In the following excerpt, Valesio closely examines the short story "Canta l'epistola."
One of the least known among the many short stories that Luigi Pirandello published in li...
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In the following excerpt, Chomel discusses Pirandello's treatment of the theme of time in several of his short stories.
The Pirandellian man, trapped in the flux of time, condemned to endur...
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In the following essay, Rauhut analyses the structure, theme, and literary devices of Pirandello's story "The Rose. "
Because of its significant human value, Pirandello'...
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In this excerpt, Radcliff-Umstead employs two examples, "The Journey" and "Happiness," to illustrate his assertion that Pirandello 's focus in his stories is "...
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In the following review, Hutchison judges the collection The Naked Truth "truly great, " asserting that Pirandello conveys the messages of his stories very subtly.
The twelve stories ...
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In the following essay, Vitti-Alexander maintains that a symbolic connection exists between Pirandello's characters and nature as it is depicted in his stories.
In the preface to Six Charact...
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In the following excerpt, Di Paolo assesses Pirandello's characterizations of women in his short stories, finding them stereotypical and limited in variety.
When reading Pirandello's...
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In the following review, Hart hails Better Think Twice about It as a testament to Pirandello's skill as a short story writer,
It is probably to the Nobel Prize judges that we owe most of ou...
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An educator and critic who specialized in the Romance languages, Starkie is best known for his tales of gypsy life, drawn from his own experiences living among them in Europe. In the following excerpt...
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In this review, Hutchison praises The Medals, and Other Stories, noting that Pirandello's work is distinct from that of other short fiction writers.
Strange and eerie, as is everything writ...
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A highly respected American literary critic, Kazin is best known for his essay collections The Inmost Leaf (1955) and Contemporaries (1962), and particularly for On Native Grounds (1942), a study of A...
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Poggioli was an Italian-born American critic and translator. Much of his critical writing is concerned with Russian literature, including The Poets of Russia: 1890-1930 (1960), which is one of the mos...
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In the following excerpt from an essay written in 1958 as an introduction to the collection Short Stories, Keene perceives Pirandello's stories to be about the human condition.
Before Pirand...
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A longtime editor of the leftist magazine Dissent and a regular contributor to The New Republic, Howe is one of America's most highly respected literary critics and social historians. He has be...
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In the space of this column, we like to make room for any manner of Internet bizarre, from allegedly sexually deviant operatic R&B singers to chipmunks with gifts for the dramatic arts.But even...
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Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Critical Essay by June Schlueter
A year-end grab bag of bizarre links
