Dante alle origini del fonosimbolismo verghiano

Giovanni Verga was among those who best employed the Commedia as a store of acoustic-syllabic aggregates suitable to produce hard, harsh, shrill sound levels where it was necessary to recall desperation and anguished athmospheres (Inferno / Hell), and as a store of sweet and melodious sounds where gentle experiences and idyllic aspects were recalled. This phonesymbolism of Dantean origin (which Pascoli will take to near bravura passages) also takes in key-words and important Dantean syntagmas, and above all innervated the veristic short stories Rosso Malpelo (1878) and Jeli the shepherd (1880) and then the novel The Malavoglias, of which the original linguistic and phone-symbolic blend is the result of the masterly mixture of the two above mentioned.