Sradicando il passato: Un’analisi del romanzo vita di Melania Mazzucco

Abstract

This thesis examines the book, Vita by Melania Mazzucco, published in 2003, which follows the story of two Italian immigrants in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. The following analysis views Vita as one novel with two stories. The first story explores the fictional experience of Vita and Diamante, as immigrants in the land of dreams. The second story is the meta-narration of the storyteller, which chronicles the development of her writing and research. Furthermore, the first story is based in the different genre of literature: The immigrant novel, theorized by William Boelhower. The corpus that formulizes the immigrant novel is visible in Vita for its inclusion of historical facts. And of these historical facts, the narrator chose to recount those that were rooted in the immigrant pain and disappointment. The meta-narration of the storyteller is evidently important for the comprehension of the immigrant novel within Vita, by focusing on themes of memory and historic writing. Despite the fact that both of these are two separate stories with their own characters, the meta-narration undoubtedly changes the course of how the fictional sequence of events is presented to the reader.