Verismo (literature)

Naturalist writers included Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant; for them, literature should objectively portray society and humanity like a photograph, strictly representing even the humblest social class in even its most unpleasant aspects, with the authors analysing real modern life like scientists.

Sicilian-born, Verga lived in Florence during the same period as the verismo painters – 1865 to 1867 – and his best known story, "Cavalleria rusticana", contains certain verbal parallels to the effects achieved on canvas by the Tuscan landscape school of this era.

Like the Macchiaioli, he was fascinated by topographical exactitude set in a nationalist framework" – to quote from Albert Boime's work, The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento.

Verga and verismo differed from naturalism, however, in their desire to introduce the reader's point of view on the matter while not revealing the author's personal opinions.

For example, the Florentine journalist and playwright Luigi Alberti considered verismo to be polluting the minds of young people with ‘everything ugly, mean, and vulgar’ that existed in real life.