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house. Quaranta mesi nel grande Oceano Australe was initially con-
ceived as a novel for teenagers, but later on the explicit intention of
the writer was to provide a lighter and more fluent work, compared
to the monumental novel by Marazzi. Although Anselmi’s book
achieved considerable success, the three volumes of Emigranti did
not seem to discourage the readers of the time, who preferred
Marazzi.
Politicians such as Giustino Fortunato (1848–1932) and
Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953) took pro-emigration positions
in the Italian parliament. Both were socio-political thinkers and
“meridionalists” (It. meridionalisti), specialists who worked to solve
the economic problems of Southern Italy after unification.33 In the
literary field, the authors who belonged to the Verismo movement
were considered meridionalists. This literary movement originated
around 1880 in Milan, which at that time was already a major cul-
tural point of convergence and attracted writers of different back-
grounds. The most representative writers of the movement were the
Sicilians Giovanni Verga (1840–1922) and Luigi Capuana (1839–
1915) and the Neapolitan Federico de Roberto (1861–1927). The
“veristi” writers are important in both a literary technical sense (i.e.
they introduced innovations in narrative style) and as social critics
(i.e. the denunciation of the exploitation of the lower classes in
Southern Italy was at the core of their works). Nonetheless, when it
comes to the matter of Italian emigration, Verismo is largely silent.
Apart from Luigi Capuana’s novel Gli americani di Ràbbato (The
Americans from Ràbbato, 1909), the movement did not offer any
substantial comment on emigration. On the contrary, its most rep-
resentative author, Giovanni Verga, distinguished himself in avoid-
ing the question.34 In Capuana’s novel the usual equation of emigra-
tion with disgrace or death is partly subverted. In America, two
33 In 1888 Francesco Saverio Nitti wrote L’emigrazione italiana e i suoi avversari (Italian emigration and
its enemies), a work he dedicated to Giustino Fortunato. According to Nitti, all the harmful effects
attributed to emigration were false, due to wrong analysis of the phenomenon, but also to delib-
erately altered analytical results, carried out in the interests of property owners. The essay was
written in opposition to Prime Minister Crispi’s law of 1887 and against the opinion of several
anti-migratory members of the parliament.
34 Pasquino Crupi underlined Verga’s silence on emigration (Crupi 1979: 51–71), while Mario B.
Mignone showed his innate conservatism (Mignone 1993: 13–14). Both scholars are quoted by
Franzina (Franzina 1996: 30, footnote 47).
STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN FATHERLAND