Abstract

The article points out the social nature of the resentment that governs Gonzalo Pirobutirro d'Eltino in the sour relationship with his mother and Lukones' peasants and parvenus. Tracing the origins of his mentality back to the first two decades of the twentieth-century Italy, the investigation depicts the main character of the novel as a representative of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia that, elsewhere in Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century, romantically reacted against the problematic modernization of the society. In Italy - finding themselves caught between the rise of the industrial and financial bourgeoisie and the legitimation of the lower classes' social claims - the bourgeois intellectuals savagely opposed the modernization of the country projected and pursued by Giovanni Giolitti between 1903 and 1913; pugnaciously promoted the disastrous participation of Italy in World War I; and ultimately joined and supported the Fascist conservative revolution.