AN ARTISTIC REPRESENTATION OF THE 20th CENTURY OF ITALIAN BOURGEOISIE THROUGH THE CRITICAL LENSES OF ALBERTO MORAVIA

Alberto Moravia was an outstanding personality of the Italian culture of the 20th century. With his first stories, Moravia laid the basis of the realist narration engaged into criticizing the social stratum of bourgeoisie. The narrative story analyzed in this writing is entitled Crime at the Tennis Club and is integral part of the stories collected in the volume Racconti 1927-1951. The story has clearly been prevailed by actions conveying the narrator's psychological annotation. Characters have been drawn via details such like physical description, garments, weird behavior and gestures. Narrative situation is neutral and narration has been conveyed in the third person. Moravia describes bourgeoisie via objective methods and drama techniques while fusing narration with the theater. Narration style results to be a product of a logical and expressive process associated with didactic cogitations. Modern prose, created by Moravia, tends to use contemporary methods and techniques. The motive of the mirror, approaching to realness and the masks reality imposes, constitute an artistic presentation of the existential metaphor of life according to which what counts is the appearance, money and semblance in front of others. Crime committed by one of the protagonists in the story, even in the presence of other men, has been presented as a fact that never happened before, since blighters leave the crime scene and turn back to the gala ball which had been planned in advance; the story's initial narration is reassumed in a circular way and staged in a group scene continuing with the grotesque ball of the manikin men.