verismo

verismo, (Italian: “realism”), literary realism as it developed in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its primary exponents were the Sicilian novelists Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga. The realist movement arose in Europe after the French Revolution and the realist influence reached Capuana and Verga particularly through the writings of Balzac and Zola in France and of the scapigliatura milanese (see scapigliatura, “Milanese bohemianism”) group in Italy. Verismo’s overriding aim was the...