Verga, Giovanni (jōvän`nē vĕr`gä), 1840–1922, Italian novelist, b. Sicily. He abandoned the study of law for literature and wrote several novels of passion in the style of the French realists. His later works, written in a different style, are marked by simplicity and strict accuracy. They deal with the Sicilian middle class and sympathetically treat the poverty and struggles of the peasantry. Verga's technique gave rise to the term verismo, denoting the realistic school. He is considered one of the outstanding writers of modern Europe and has been compared with Flaubert and Zola. His works include Cavalleria rusticana (1880, tr. with other stories in the same volume by D. H. Lawrence, 1928), I Malavoglia (1881, tr. The House by the Medlar Tree, 1890), Novelle rusticane (1883, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, Little Novels of Sicily, 1925), and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, 1923). The dramatization of Cavalleria rusticana was produced in 1884, and Mascagni's opera, based on it, in 1890. A stage version of La lupa, one of his best stories, was produced in 1896 (tr. The Wolf Hunt, 1921).

Bibliography

See study by G. L. Lucente (1981).

Verga, Giovanni

(born Sept. 2, 1840, Catania, Sicily—died Jan. 27, 1922, Catania) Italian writer, the most important of the verismo (realist) school of novelists. Born to a family of landowners, Verga left Sicily for the mainland, where he remained until 1893. There he developed a writing style noted for its terse accuracy and intensity of feeling. His best works include the short stories of Little Novels of Sicily (1883), the novels The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), and the play Cavalleria rusticana (1884; “Rustic Chivalry”), which became immensely popular when it was adapted as an opera by Pietro Mascagni. His influence on the post-World War II generation of Italian Neorealist writers was particularly marked (see Neorealism).