Death and the Margins of Theater in Luigi Pirandello

Abstract

Molière and Luigi Pirandello have very different approaches to the theater: loosely, Molière is of a Neo-classical tradition that pursued the dramatic unities even more obsessively than did the Greeks, whereas Pirandello was committed to undermining these traditions, especially any notion that both character and stage should be stable and consistent. In his 2008 study of Pirandello, Umberto Mariani spends a great deal of time exploring the way in which Pirandello’s plays serve as a response to the comfortable certainty of earlier theatrical modes: what Mariani calls the "bourgeoise theatre," but which could perhaps just as easily be called the realist or naturalist theater. While clearly fascinated by the subjective reality of Pirandello’s characters, Mariani carefully examines those specific features of Pirandello’s plays which function to bring his characters to life, focusing especially on the role of communication: “a character is a creature of the imagination, a form of communication that lives only in the act of communicating”.

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