Nasciturus against pessimism in the plays »Liolà« and »Mandragola« by Luigi Pirandello and Niccolò Machiavelli

Abstract

Italian literature is strongly rooted in its own tradition. It reached its climax and standardized its language rather early, which had a favourable influence on the recurrences of various forms. The author analyses two dramatic works, Mandragola and Liolà, by Niccolò Machiavelli and Luigi Pirandello, as a possible instance of the model and its later variant. He compared characters and social relations concerning the problem of nasciturus and points to some facts showing that Pirandello, writing his Liolà, may have had in mind Machiavelli’s Mandragola, although there is a great distance in time, spirit, poetic creation and social life. After discussing the similarities of situations and characterization in the two works a mutual idea is discovered concerning the possibility of surmounting pessimism related to society. It characterizes both writers in their literary output, and they achieve it through an apotheosis of phylogenesis symbolized in the birth of child, at the same time neglecting the obstructions of social morality and immorality of various centuries.