Thresholds and Tortoises: Modernist Animality in Pirandello's Fiction

The present study provides a posthumanist reading of Pirandello’s fiction, with the aim of highlighting the author’s specifically modernist take on animality. The first half of the chapter illustrates Pirandello’s awareness of a zoological continuum encompassing human and nonhuman beings; particular emphasis is placed on his innovative dialogue with the nineteenth-century tradition (Balzac), as well as on the typically modernist aspects of his posthumanist gaze – e.g. the sense of a “cosmic” detachment from human events, and the strategic use of thresholds (openings and epilogues) to undermine the anthropocentrism inherent to traditional narrative forms. The second half focuses on a specific case study, i.e. the role assigned to the tortoise in the short stories “Paura d’esser felice” and “La tartaruga”. In both texts, the protagonist’s “becoming-tortoise” (Deleuze and Guattari) is instrumental to Pirandello’s modernist critique of anthropocentrism.