Hum (Jan 2020)
HUMOURIST BONTEMPELLI AND COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES L’EDEN DELLA TARTARUGA
Abstract
Known primarily as the founder of Italian magic realism, Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960) was also appreciated in the inner circle of 20th century Italian writers and critics for his exquisite vein of humour present throughout his literary work in shape of irony, parody, satire and even grotesque. Starting from his very first collection of short stories Socrate moderno (1908) to his mature literary works between the 1920s and 1930s, Bontempelli perfectionated his humourist expression. What comes as confirmation of these claims are not only his short stories from that period, panoramically reviewed from this specific point of view, but also L'Eden della tartaruga (1926), Bontempelli's rare collection of short stories practically forgotten by the critics and the readership, included in an interesting publishing experiment, a book series of humorous short story collections called Umorismo italiano. Serie del fauno giallo edited by Giuseppe Zucca. In the second part of the article the collection is described in details and placed within his oeuvre thus revealing Bontempelli’s own publishing venture: uniting published and unpublished short stories in order to connect his previous and future literary works into a macrotext.
