ABSTRACT
The punctuation and fragmentation of the diegesis effected by the chains of recurring metaphors, and by the epiphanic moments which interrupt the text, provided a key to reading I vecchi e i giovani, in conjunction with its layers of concealed sources. In Pirandello's other 'realist' novel of this period, Suo marito, such issues take centre stage. In fact, it is in Suo marito that issues of textuality (or the problematic material status of the text) and epiphany converge; both these issues have been overlooked by critics, or dismissed as peripheral problems, instead of being considered more properly as important structural and thematic devices, not peripheral but central to the novel's form. In Suo marito, the relation between text and reality is always mediated through other texts, a relation complicated by the fact that, as a Künstlerroman, the novel also places the creative process at its heart, giving the text an overtly metafictional quality. Drawing on ideas of authorship and originality, I will look at Suo marito's staging of the conflict between the moment of artistic creation (assimilated to the epiphanic moment in Pirandello's narrative lexicon) and the processes of textual production, between the idea of the author as original creator of an 'organic' text and the self-quotation and plagiarism which is the reality of Pirandello's narrative praxis. How far can Suo marito, in its layering of texts and in its textual and editorial concerns, stand as a microcosm of Pirandello's entire narrative oeuvre?
