Introduction

The novelistic tradition in Italy originated with Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi, giving the historical novel a special importance and value in Italian literary heritage. The boom in the production of historical novels in Italy has yielded a great diversity in the types of historical narration produced. Despite the abiding popularity of the historical novel since its first appearance on the Italian literary panorama, until very recently, twentieth-century developments of the genre were largely ignored by Italianists. Individual exponents of the genre – most notably Tornasi di Lampedusa's Il gattopardo and Elsa Morante's La Storia – enjoyed considerable national and international success and aroused much debate and, on occasion, great controversy. The increased and diversified production of Italian historical novels in the latter half of the century has generated a concomitant increase in the production and diversity of taxonomies of, and critical approaches to, the genre.