Bontempelli, Massimo

Bontempelli, Massimo 

Born May 12, 1878, in Como; died July 23, 1960, in Rome. Italian writer.

Between 1926 and 1929, Bontempelli supervised the journal Novecento in Rome and was the theoretician of the literary tendency called Novecentism, which proclaimed the emancipation of the creative power of fantasy from reality (for example, in the book Literary Novecentism, 1931). He advanced the formulation of magical realism, which combined realistic concreteness and grotesque fantasy and confused the regularities of the real world, in the novels A Son of Two Mothers (1929), People in Time (1937), and others.

WORKS

Tutto narratore, vols. 1–7. [Milan], 1938.
In Russian translation:
“Ostrov Iren.” In Ital’ianskaia novella XX veka. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCES

Russo, L. Inarratori (1850–1950). Milan-Messina, [1951].
Gargiulo, A. Letteratura italiana del novecento. Florence, 1958.
Baldacci, L. M. Bontempelli. Turin, [1967].

Z. M. POTAPOVA