GRAZIA DELEDDA (1947)

Novelist, a writer of the verismo (naturalistic) school in Italian literature who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1926.

She married very young and moved to Rome where she lived quietly, frequently visiting her native Sardinia, the setting of most of her fiction.

Almost without formal schooling she wrote her first stories at 17, based on sentimental treatment of folklore themes; but with Il vecchio della montagna (1900; The Old Man of the Mountain) she began to write about the tragic effects of temptation and sin within the conscience and consciousness of primitive human beings.

Her most important works are Elias Portolou (1903), the story of a mystical former convict in love with his brother´s bride; Cenere (1904), in which an illegitimate son causes his mother´s suicide; L`edera (1906; The Ivy) which tells of a servant who kills to save her master from from financial ruin; and La madre (1920), the tragedy of a mother who realizes her dream of her son´s becoming a priest only to see him yield to the temptation of the flesh.

The author developed similar themes in nearly 50 other novels. Cosima, her autobiography, was published posthumously in 1937.

Grazia Deledda´s approach to the psychology of the Sardinia resembles that of Giovanni Verga in his handing of Sicilian peasants.