Strangers in Their Own Fatherland. A Study of Emigrants in Italian History and Literature (1860–1920).

Abstract

This article considers the mass migratory phenomenon which took place in Italy between the decades after unification (1861) and the beginning of the First World War. In this period, the dimensions of the migration were a clear indication of the failure of the development policies of the new state and its governments. In addition, the migration, which involved the rural classes in particular, caused a progressive depopulation of the farmlands both in northern and southern Italy. Landholders faced a shortage of the very labour force they had been exploiting for centuries. The situation originated in a repressive attitude of the Italian institutions which determined the diffusion of the image of emigration as a sad event linked to disgrace, sickness, insanity and death. The Italian writers that started to consider emigration as the central issue of their works at that time used common sources and references, which inevitably influenced their view of the phenomenon. If the works of fiction were obviously different in terms of style and structure, what unified Italian literature of emigration was the fact that the authors considered the emigration as a fundamentally negative issue, an act against the natural laws of the community of origin and for this very reason emigration could only bring grief and sorrow and was doomed to fail.

Keywords: Italian emigration, emigrants, literature, America