Matilde Serao, Il ventre di Napoli [The Belly of Naples]

Ursula Fanning (Dublin City University)

Ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.1: Italian Writing and Culture, 453-present.
Vol. editors: Carla Bregman (Independent Scholar - North America), Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University)

Domains

Journalism

Dates

First circulation or publication 1884

Places

Italy (Country of Origin)

Resources

Il ventre di Napoli [The Belly of Naples] is a collection of Serao’s nine articles on the state of Naples in the immediate aftermath of the cholera epidemic of September 1884. The articles were part of an impassioned debate on the epidemic (which claimed 6,852 lives) and on the government’s handling of it. The title of the collection is Serao’s direct response to Depretis’s (the then prime minister) famous statement, “Bisogna sventrare Napoli” [“We have to disembowel Naples”]. She mocks this idea: “Sventrare Napoli? Credete che basterà? [. . .] Vedrete, vedrete [. . .] bisogna rifare” [“Disembowel Naples? Do you think that will be enough? [. . .] You’ll see, …

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912 words

Citation: Fanning, Ursula. "Il ventre di Napoli". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 July 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28440, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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