«A score of other prolific writers, among whom were
Capuana,
Serao,
Di Giacomo, and, later on,
Grazia Deledda, continued to compose novels that focussed on the life in their respective native provinces; at times, as in the case of Capuana, the regionalistic setting lost its importance to psychological probing. From beyond the
Alps,
Darwin's 1859 finding on the "
Origin of Species",
Taine's theory of la "race, le moment et le milieu", and the doctrinaire programs of
Émile Zola, were permeating the intellectual climate in Italy. We must therefore look to De Roberto's sympathies for the critical postures of his friends Capuana and Verga, and to his interest in the psychological and pseudoscientific trends of
French fiction in the second half of the nineteenth century, if we are to single out the intellectual fathers of our novelist.»
