Quasi un secolo, tra 'cronaca' e 'fantasia': Corrado Alvaro e la diaristica italiana

This research aims at analyzing the phenomenon of the 20th century Italian diaries, considered as a literary genre. The powerful devastation of History plays a great role in defeating the old centricity of the “I” (pronoun as well as subject) and the diary isn’t a mere representation of the self anymore, but it hybridizes with the note-book and turns into a subjective chronicle of the present. My work tries to prove it by studying about a hundred of Italian diaries. After an introduction about theoretical studies, the first section focuses on the structure of the diary, its style (the use of subjective pronouns and tenses, the choice of the fragment and the level of literacy), the most frequent functions (the quest for identity, the evaluation of the whole life, the struggle for saving private and social memory, a neurotic exercise, but also the diary as a fictional genre). The diary deals with evergreen themes, such as sincerity and authenticity, love, money and metaliterary comments. After the writing, it can be reread, corrected and published; it arouses strong reactions among the readers, the other diarists, but also some philological problems for the publishers. This approach has been applied to Corrado Alvaro’sQuasi una vitaandUltimo diarioas two very representative cases of 20th century Italian diary: they combine over thirty years of fragments about History, Literature, while the author looks for his writing style and his role in the present.