Sciascia, Stendhal, Sicily

Sciascia's Stendhal e la Sicilia (1984) is of significance for what it reveals about his self-definition as a European and Sicilian writer. Commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary of Stendhal's birth, it focuses on Sicily's literary image and what it represented, truly or falsely, in the minds of the French novelist and his contemporaries. This study contextualizes Sciascia's interpretation of Stendhal within the framework of Sciascia's own canon as an Italian realist and a Sicilian, as well as within the larger context of contemporary Sicilian literature. It contributes to studies on Sciascia and Stendhal and to those of the literary history of Sicily by introducing English-speaking readers to a largely ignored work by a major Italian author and to the now forgotten, but once vital, image of Sicily in Romantic European literature.