A Study Guide for Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide (New Edition) for William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia E. Butler's Kindred Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to A Study Guide for Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author"
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for Edward Bond's "Lear" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "School for Scandal" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeparate Tables (The Rattigan Collection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "Cherry Orchard" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flare Path Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Pablo Neruda's "Ode to My Socks" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Congreve's "Love for Love" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Other Works by Samuel Beckett Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShe Stoops to Conquer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to the Major Plays of Henrik Ibsen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiterature Companion: The White Devil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReady Reference Treatise: All My Sons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for V.S. Naipaul's "B. Wordsworth" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Oliver Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Ivanov and Other Works by Anton Chekhov Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wislawa Szymborska's "Some People Like Poetry" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Aphra Behn's "The Rover" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Anna Akhmatova's "Midnight Verses" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and the English Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Baal and Other Works by Bertolt Brecht Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Blake's "The Lamb" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPicture and Text Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaves in the Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for T. S. Eliot's "Selected Essays, 1917-1932" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Guide: Therese Raquin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Moby Dick (Complete Unabridged Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" - Gale
4
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello
1921
Introduction
Six Characters in Search of an Author created Luigi Pirandello’s international reputation in the 1920s and is still the play by which he is most widely identified.
With originality that was startling to his contemporaries, Pirandello introduced a striking and compelling dramatic situation that initially baffled but eventually dazzled audiences and critics alike. In what begins as a realistic play he introduces six figures who make the extraordinary claim that they are the incomplete but independent products of an artist’s imagination—characters
the artist abandoned when he couldn’t complete their story. These characters
have arrived on the stage to find an author themselves, someone who will give them the fullness of literary life that their original author has denied them. Furthermore, these characters
claim that they are more real
than the actors who eventually want to portray them.
This concept was so startling it helped to incite a riot in the audience when the original production of the play was staged in Rome on May 10, 1921. Later that year, however, audiences and critics had assimilated the extraordinary idea and were enchanted by a remounted production in Milan. The play would then see successful productions in London and New York in February and October of 1922, in Paris in 1923, and in Berlin and Vienna in 1924. Pirandello’s own theatre company, founded in 1925, then performed the play in Italian throughout the major cities of Europe and North and South America. As a result of this assault on the theatre world, Pirandello became one of the most respected and influential dramatists in the world by the end of the 1920s, and today Six Characters in Search of an Author is considered one of the most influential plays in the history of world literature.
Author Biography
Luigi Pirandello was born in Sicily (the large island near the toe
of Italy) on June 28, 1867, to a wealthy father who owned sulphur mines. Though his father wanted him to pursue a business career, Pirandello preferred academics and by 1891 had earned a Ph.D. in linguistics, eventually spending many years of his life as a professor of Italian literature and language at a school for women in Rome.
In 1894 Pirandello’ s father arranged for his son to marry the daughter of his business partner, and Pirandello’s resulting financial independence enabled him to live in Rome and pursue a writing career. Although he initially focused on poetry and short stories, Pirandello first achieved success as a writer in 1904 with the novel The Late Mattia Pascal. However, in 1903 floods in his father’s sulphur mines had brought financial ruin to the Pirandellos and altered the playwright’s life irrevocably. Pirandello’s wife reacted to the catastrophe with an emotional breakdown from which she never recovered, spending the rest of her life in a condition of mental instability. His wife’s condition made Pirandello’s life miserable but also supplied