The unconscious on the stage in the theatrical productions of Luigi Antonelli, Luigi Pirandello e the 'Grotesques'

This dissertation will analyze the impact of the crucial historical and sociological implications that aligned with the theatrical productions of Italian playwrights who wrote between 1915 and 1935, through a psychoanalytic and post-structuralist approach. Their plays are filled with traumatized characters, some are suicidal and some simply evoke death. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the various ways in which this sense of historical "dissonance" saturates many plays during this period, as present in the works of Luigi Antonelli, Luigi Pirandello and the "Grotesques". In addition, I will prove that Luigi Pirandello, who has always been considered the precursor and exemplary "maestro" for the so-called Grotesques playwrights, has actually draw inspiration from these writers. My research reevaluates the theatrical productions of Luigi Antonelli and the other "Grotesques" whose worth has been silenced by the dominating voice of Pirandello, the supposed master of them. This dissertation is divided in four chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion, and each chapter has a specific theoretical approach. In the first chapter, I will assert that the historical and cultural happenings that occur at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Freud's psychoanalysis, De Saussure's Linguistics, Bergson's findings, Einstein's relativity, and World War I, deeply influenced the playwrights of this period by creating an aura of uncertainty and harsh "dissonance", which can be perceived in their works. The second chapter I will study linguistic aspects (e.g. the relationships between meanings and referents, signifiers and signified, etc.) of specific plays of this same group of authors. I will prove that fragmentation is present in the linguistic choices of these writers and that it has both a negative connotation and a positive one. In the third chapter I will investigate the effects of "modernism" on these plays, and prove that even if the modernization is attributable of the decentralization and crisis of the self, the human psyche is ultimately responsible for it. The final chapter is more gender-charged as it will deal with the fragmentation of female characters in certain plays. My research will prove that women are even more fragmented than men characters because the male authors view them from a fallocratic perspective, which tears them apart. In conclusion, outer fragmentation and dissonance penetrate the theatrical productions of Piarandello, Antonelli and the "Grotesques" invading all aspects of their plays.