Francesco Jovine
Francesco Jovine was an influential Italian writer born in the southern region of Molise in 1903. His early life in small towns profoundly shaped his literary voice, reflecting the struggles and aspirations of rural life. After a brief military service and a stint as a school teacher, he moved to Rome, where he became involved in antifascist activities during World War II. Jovine's literary career began with mixed success, but he gained recognition with his semiautobiographical novel "Un uomo provvisorio," which captured the complexities of leaving a village for city life.
His significant works include "Signora Ava," set during the Italian reunification, and "Le terre del Sacramento," which addresses the conflict between landowners and peasants in southern Italy, showcasing a commitment to social realism. Jovine's writing is noted for its shift away from ornate styles to a more grounded, authentic representation of Italian life, earning him critical acclaim, including the Viareggio Prize. He also produced short story collections that explored themes of fascism and postwar reconstruction. Despite his untimely death in 1950, Jovine's legacy endures in his impactful portrayals of Italian society and the human condition.
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Subject Terms
Francesco Jovine
Writer
- Born: October 9, 1902
- Birthplace: Guardialfiera, Campobasso, Italy
- Died: April 1, 1950
- Place of death: Rome, Italy
Biography
Francesco Jovine was born in southern Italy in an area called the Molise, located in the Apennines Mountains north of Naples. His father was a small landowner and land surveyor. After spending his first nine years in the small town of Guardialfiera, Jovine and his family moved to Larino, and then Velletri, just north of Rome. Here Jovine graduated from school in 1918, and then became a school teacher and later a school proctor at various boarding schools in the southern provinces of Abruzzio and Campania. After a brief spell of military service, he moved to Rome and enrolled in the faculty of education at the University of Rome. Here he met Dina Bertoni, whom he married in 1928.
After graduating, he became an assistant to a well-known educator, Giuseppe Lombardo-Radice, then secured an appointment as head teacher at the Giulio Cesare school in Rome. His increasingly antifascist philosophy led to a confrontation with the minister of education and a request to be moved abroad. From 1937 to 1940, he taught in Tunisia and Egypt, returning to Rome just before Italy entered World War II. He was to remain in Rome the rest of his life. During the war he joined a group of antifascist writers and became actively involved in the Italian resistance. In 1948, he officially joined the Communist Party. Apart from some journalistic writing, he was by now fully engaged in writing fiction, not having taken up teaching again since his return to Rome. His health deteriorated, however, and he died of a heart attack in 1950 at the age of forty-seven..
Jovine’s first works were an unsuccessful children’s book, Berluè, and a semiabsurdist play, Il burattinaio metafisico. A second play, Giorni che rinasceranno, produced in 1948, did little better. Jovine had more success with a novel, Un uomo provvisorio, published in 1934. It is a semiautobiographical tale about leaving village life in southern Italy and coming to the big city, exciting at first, but increasingly isolating. The book demonstrates Jovine’s search for a realistic, authentically south Italian style of writing. His first major work, Signora Ava (1942; Seeds in the Wind, 1946), is set in the Molise around the time of the Italian reunification in 1861. The book has a narrative maturity and objectively portrays the grinding conditions of peasant life and the carelessness of the often absentee landowners.
His second major novel was Le terre del Sacramento (1950; The Estate in Abruzzi,1952). Again set in southern Italy, depicting the conflict between landowners and peasants, the book offers some hope of achieving agrarian reform and its language is terse and realistic. The book won the Viareggio Prize in 1950. Jovine’s other works include collections of short stories, most notably Il pastore sepolto and L’impero in provincia, both published in 1945. These collections contain stories set in the Molise depicting the coming of fascism, the German occupation, and the missed opportunities of postwar reconstruction. In 1948, Jovine published Tutti i miei peccati, a collection of novellas. Jovine’s work moved the Italian novel away from its florid style to a more realistic one.