L'istanza prefativa come incipit nel romanzo italiano della seconda metà dell'Ottocento

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the preface as a peculiar kind of narrative beginning in a decisive moment for the Italian novel. Sometimes prefaces are difficult to determine because of their ambiguity, which leads to the possibility of questioning where the proper literary text begins. According to this idea, the objet under analysis here consists on some exemplifying Italian narrative fragments from Tarchetti’s Fosca, Verga’s Eva, De Roberto’s Ermanno Raeli and Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal ; even if they take the form of prefaces, they fulfil the proper function of narrative beginnings. Actually, the kind of discourse employed to convey a sense of continuity with reality comes out to be a fictional one.