Cognitive relativism and the narrative technique of multiple points of view in Luigi Pirandello and Ford Madox Ford

Abstract

Luigi Pirandello (1876- 1936) and Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) were two writers coming from very different historical and political environments: the former lived in Giolittian Italy, whereas the latter's milieu was Edwardian England. Both started their literary activity in a late-Romantic cultural environment. In Pirandello's opinion the predecessors to be surpassed were the writers of the 'Verismo' movement (Verga and Capuana), whereas in Ford's opinion the 'horrible monsters' were represented by Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian poets. Although they lived in the same historical period, these two writers never met, the only trace of Ford's possible knowledge of Pirandello's work being in the chronological table of the former's history of world literature, entitled The March of Literature (1938), where the works of the Sicilian author are mentioned.