ABSTRACT
A cursory glance round any bookshop suggests that the Italian reading-public has nothing like the appetite for autobiography and biography of the British and Americans, at least as regards their co-nationals, though translations from other languages are fairly common. Autobiographies by Italians are sparse; though there is more biography, it still does not compare to what is to be found in English. Biographies of Italians which create readable, informed narrative and are willing to consider the more problematic sides of the individual in question, are written by foreigners. The literary conventions seem in fact to re-enact patterns of behaviour that are equally deeply ingrained in Italian society as a whole. In the 1950s and 60s Montale, Ungaretti and Quasimodo were often rather unconvincingly put together as yet another tre corone of Italian poetry. Montale is also an outstanding case of autobiographical writing in the traditional Italian mould.
