Giovanni Verga - Links
Writer, born in Catania, Sicily, S Italy. A member of the Italian verismo (‘realist’) school of novelists, he wrote numerous violent short stories describing the miserable life of Sicilian peasantry, including Vita dei campi (1880, Life in the Fields) and Cavalleria rusticana (1884), which was made into an opera by Mascagni. The same Zolaesque theme prevails in his novels, I malavoglia (1881), Mastro Don Gesualdo (1888), and others - the futility of the struggle to cast aside the bonds of tradition and the inescapable loneliness of the individual. D H Lawrence translated some of his works.
Giovanni Verga (2 September 1840 - 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story Cavalleria Rusticana.
The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily.
Meanwhile, Verga had been serving in the Catania National Guard (1860-64), after which he travelled to Florence several times, settling there in 1869.
He moved to Milan in 1872, where he developed his new approach, characterized by the use of dialogue to develop character, which resulted in his most significant works.
He then embarked on a projected series of five novels, but only completed two, I Malavoglia and Mastro Don Gesualdo (1889), the latter of which was the last major work of his literary career.
In 1894 Verga moved back to the house he was born in, where he died of a cerebral thrombosis in 1922.
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