La narrativa sarda recente: uno sguardo dall’interno

Abstract

This is Giulio Angioni’s report which he presented at the opening of our conference. Giulio, our dear  friend and colleague, departed this world last January leaving an intellectual vacuum behind him that is  not easy to fill, together with heartfelt regret in all those who were close to him and who had the chance  to talk to him. Not only we do wish to remember his wisdom and erudition as an anthropologist, his  original gaze on Sardinian reality and the precious scientific contributions he gave to us, but let us also  recall his activity as a narrator and as an artist. This allowed him to describe and represent our land in all  its problematic aspects: two activities which, as he says here, must necessarily be linked together.  

In these pages, Giulio Angioni reviews the literary activity and production in Sardinia, and the dialectical, and  sometimes contradictory, coexistence of two languages on the Island, both of which are also used in Literature.  This paper then takes into account the literary work of Grazia Deledda who, in many ways, was the initiator of  the “new” Sardinian literature. Indeed, she was almost an archetype for Sardinian narrators to come, as she  introduced a modern approach in narrating Sardinia. Her reception was great in Sardinia, but above all in and  outside Italy and the novels she set outside Sardinia were always a flop. This leads to a reflection on the  relationship that Sardinian narrators (must) have with their own land, and on what the non-Sardinian reader  expects from the narrators of Sardinia, namely, on the relationship between global and local.  

[His friends on the Rhesis editorial staff]