Subjective Realities

Abstract In Giovanni Verga’s I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree, 1881), the most important novel of verismo (Italian naturalism), the natural and social environment is not described in detail but appears in glimpses and fragments, filtered through the characters’ perspectives and as a window into their feelings, desires, or interests. The stress is not so much on the influence of the milieu on the characters’ psyche as on how their psyche molds the world around them. Through an analysis of the many ways in which the village and its polar opposite, the modern city, are reinvented and described within the novel, this article argues that, by showing the discursive malleability of the environment, I Malavoglia ends up casting doubt on the mere possibility of an objective representation of reality.