Putting the self into perspective: Fiction and moral imagination in Giovanni Verga

In this article, I argue that we should avoid a moralist interpretation of Verga and his Verist works. The literary value of Verga's Verist works consists neither in the expression of a nostalgia for the good life within a traditional community, nor in a defiant attitude towards a nihilist modernity. This is better shown by a careful reading of Fantasticheria, which I claim is the key text for understanding both Verga's career as a writer, and his novel I Malavoglia (1881). Fantasticheria is both a form of self-writing, whereby Verga stages himself as a modernist writer, and a metanarrative and meta-fictional commentary, which elaborates on a theory of literary fiction. According to Verga, writing and reading fiction is an exercise in moral imagination; it is a way of imagining life from the others’ point of view, and putting one's own sense of oneself into perspective.