This book explores Darwinism in modern Italian literature. In the years
between Italy's unification (1861) and the rise of fascism, many writers
gave voice to anxieties connected with the ideas of evolution and
progress. This study shows how Italian authors borrowed and reworked a
scientific vocabulary to write about the contradictions and the
contrasting tensions of Italy's cultural and political-economic
modernization. It focuses, above all, on novels by Italo Svevo, Federico
De Roberto and Luigi Pirandello. The analysis centers on such topics as
the struggle against adverse social conditions in capitalistic society,
the risk of failing to survive the struggle itself, the adaptive issues
of individuals uprooted from their family and work environments, the
concerns about the heredity of maladapted characters. Accordingly, the
book also argues that the hybridization and variation of both narrative
forms and collective mindsets describes the modernist awareness of the
cultural complexity experienced in Italy and Europe at this time.