Thresholds and Tortoises: Modernist Animality in Pirandello’s Fiction

Abstract

This chapter illustrates Pirandello’s specifically modernist take on animality. The first half highlights 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—for example 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, that is, 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.