ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that 'La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla' started life, probably at or near the same time, as a tale in the mode of Dubliners. 'La novella' is usually regarded as a work of Svevo's maturity. Its action takes place 'nel terzo anno della guerra', that is, in 1917, two years after Joyce's departure from Trieste. Joyce's declared intention in Dubliners was to 'write a chapter in the moral history' of Ireland—an Ireland which he saw as corrupt and paralysed. Svevo's works at times lead one to attribute to him a similar intention: his humour merely masks an irony which is as corrosive as Joyce's. The realism of Dubliners is almost impersonal: every detail is important, and its effect carefully calculated: but the narrator never intervenes to explain or comment. The economics of social and moral decline are always carefully observed in Dubliners.
