Mind Plays

About the Book

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Italian playwright, Luigi Pirandello, sought with his dark views of reality to attack conventional social codes and the bourgeois nature of Italian theater.  To do so, he took elements of his personal life and combined them with the most advanced thinking that Europe had to offer and the result was world acclaim and in 1934 a Nobel Prize in Literature.  Mind Plays: Essays on Luigi Pirandello’s Theater examines his efforts in terms of six of his most celebrated and most often produced dramas.  Enrico IV (Henry IV, 1922) is seen in relation to aestheticism and contemporary theories of personality and insanity.  Così è (se vi pare) (Right You Are [If You Think So], 1917) is viewed against new mathematical theories and relativity.  Come tu mi vuoi (As You Desire Me, 1930) is weighed against modern views of moral choice.  I giganti della montagna (The Mountain Giants, 1937) is discussed in relation to contemporary interests in myth, and Il giuoco delle parti (The Rules of the Game, 1918) is seen against established theories of play.  The result is what may be termed a “modernist” and “international” Pirandello, who is more in tune with other contemporary figures like David Hilbert, Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein that commonly emerges from examinations of his work.  In earlier forms, segments of the book appeared in Comparative Drama, Essays in Literature, and Modern Drama.

About the Author

Jerome Mazzaro is an accomplished poet and critic. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and received degrees from the State University of Iowa (M.A. in Creative Writing) and Wayne State University (A.B. and Ph.D.) He has taught at the University of Detroit, the State University of New York, Bennington College, and San Diego State College. In 1964, he was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and he has served as Editor and Contributing Editor for a number of journals. His books include a verse translation of Juvenal’s Satires, critical studies on Robert Lowell, the Renaissance English Lyric, William Carlos Williams, Luigi Pirandello, and Dante as well as four volumes of poetry. In 1996, he retired from the State University of New York at Buffalo and currently lives in Manhattan.