Maria Martone, Gian Gaspare Napolitano e Novellieri inglesi e americani

The essay analyzes the section “Americani” in the anthology Novellieri inglesi e americani, published in 1944 by Salvatore De Carlo, edited by Maria Martone in collaboration with her husband Gian Gaspare Napolitano. The volume can be considered as the first answer to Elio Vittorini’s Americana, published by Bompiani in 1942. Though praising the importance of Vittorini’s work, Martone and Napolitano differentiate their text in terms of selective criteria. This essay wishes to demonstrate the influence exerted on Martone and Napolitano’s anthology by Henry Louis Mencken’s studies on the autonomy of the American language as opposed to British English (The American Language, 1919).