Italian Culture

Volume 24-25, 2006-2007

E-ISSN: 1559-0909 Print ISSN: 0161-4622

DOI: 10.1353/itc.2007.0025

Amatangelo, Susan, 1967-
Fictive Mediation and Mediated Fiction in the Novels of Giovanni Verga (review)
Italian Culture - Volume 24-25, 2006-2007, pp. 229-232

Michigan State University Press

Susan Amatangelo - Fictive Mediation and Mediated Fiction in the Novels of Giovanni Verga (review) - Italian Culture 24 Italian Culture 24 (2007) 229-232 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Susan Amatangelo College of the Holy Cross Darby Tench. Fictive Mediation and Mediated Fiction in the Novels of Giovanni Verga. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2005. Pp. xxxiv + 304. Fictive Mediation and Mediated Fiction in the Novels of Giovanni Verga represents a much-welcome contribution to scholarship on Verga, verismo, and nineteenth-century Italian literature. Although the book is not without its flaws, Darby Tench provides an expert reading of Verga's masterpiece, I Malavoglia, and highlights the stylistic sophistication of his earlier novels. The book's introduction defines the terms "fictive mediation" and "mediated fiction" while offering a preliminary history of the dialectic between 'immediacy' and 'mediation' in literature. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical basis for Tench's analysis, which she...