The Novel as Investigation: Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi by JoAnn Cannon

MLR, I03.1, 2oo8 257 genre and the culture and practice of the stage' (p. 213). Italian dramatic texts of this period are often of poor quality (when Italian Romantic theatre finally finds its author he will not be Italian, contemporary, or Romantic, butWilliam Shakespeare). The real creators of the period were the actors: Antonio Morrocchesi, Luigi Vestri, Alamanno Morelli, and Gustavo Modena in the firstpart of the century; and later, Adelaide Ristori, Tommaso Salvini, Ernesto Rosso, Giovanni Grasso, Ermete Zac coni, Ermete Novelli, and Eleonora Duse. Taviani likens the achievements of these actors to theachievement of Italians in the fieldof opera. In his almost scientific ana lysis of the teachingmanuals leftby some of these actors he shows that the difficult taskof assessing actors' creativity can be accomplished. Taviani is equally incisive and revealing about the role of dialect theatre in Italy. It iswell known that a dialect is associated with some of the roles of the comme dia dell'arte actors. Less isknown about the regional theatres of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There were two theatres in the nineteenth century: 'a theatre for thewhole of Italy but not based on an actually spoken language, and theatres which provided a voice for languages thatwere actually spoken but were peculiar to a region' (p. 215). Regional theatre is furtherexplored inchapters on thedialect theatre of northern Italy (Roberto Cuppone), Neapolitan theatre (Gaetana Marrone), and Sicilian dialect theatre (Antonio Scuderi). The role of the actor is lesswell explored in the restof the book, however, although Paolo Puppa, in his delightful chapter on Pirandello, comments on Pirandello's innovative use of the role system inhis use of the comic character (brillante) for the raisonneur figure and on the particularities of the acting style ofRuggero Ruggeri. The two editors have done well in their choice ofwriters; all the essays in this welcome book are at the least informativeand some (for instance, inaddition to those already mentioned, Pier Mario Vescovo's on Goldoni and Costantino Maeder's on Metastasio) are especially enlightening. Not everyone will agree, however, with the editors' selections of topics and chapters: that,for instance, Italo Svevo and Pier Paolo Pasolini should have chapters to themselves, and that the two avant-garde periods, the Futurists of theearly twentiethcentury and the theatreof the I96os and I970s, should be compressed into one short chapter. And there are overlaps and omissions: Paolo Puppa in the lastchapter, 'The Contemporary Scene', includes women writers already mentioned in the previous chapter 'Contemporary Women's Theatre' by Sharon Wood. In sections on themodern period there isno mention of Roberto Bacchelli, Diego Fabbri, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, or Carlo Terron; Ugo Betti warrants two mentions but not of any ofhis plays. Variety of style and approach implicit in multiple authorship can be seen as a bonus. Whether, however, this finecollection of essays, arranged in chronological order, amounts to a 'historyof Italian theatre' isdebatable. UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK JENNIFER LORCH The Novel as Investigation: Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabuc chi. By JoANN CANNON. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University ofToronto Press. 2006. iX+ 134 pp. ?32. ISBN 978-0-8020-9I14-7. The Novel as Investigation examines six key textswhich discuss notions of crime and punishment, justice and injustice, testimony and judgement: Porte aperte (I985) and II cavaliere e lamorte (I989) by Leonardo Sciascia, Isolina (I985) and Voci (I994) by Dacia Maraini, and Sostiene Pereira (I994) and La testaperduta di Damasceno Mon teiro(I997) byAntonio Tabucchi. A chapter of JoAnnCannon's book isdedicated to each of theseworks. The texts are all investigations of some sort:Cannon defines II cavaliere e lamorte, Voci, and La testaperduta di Damasceno Monteiro as gialli, and 258 Reviews Porte aperte, Isolina, and Sostiene Pereira as historical investigations. She argues that thehistorical novels display many of the same characteristics as the detective novels. In each case the enquiry is carried out by similar character-types: non-professional detectives, police investigators, lawyers, judges and journalists. All suffer,Cannon suggests, fromVittorini's notion of 'ilmale del mondo offeso'. The writers explore different social problems, with Sciascia focusing on abuses of power and the death penalty,Maraini examining violence against women, and Tabucchi highlighting tor ture,police brutality, and human rights...

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