Massimo Bontempelli was a modernist writer of novels, short stories, plays, and poems, and is perhaps most noted for being the first to use the term Magic Realism (
realismo magico)
in literature and for being its main proponent in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. Born in 1878 in Como, his childhood was spent moving to and from various Italian cities due to his father’s employment with the national railroad. While in high school in Milan, Bontempelli studied under the writer and humorist Alfredo Panzini and later was a student of literary critic Arturo Graf at the University of Torino, where he graduated in 1902 having written two theses: one for Literature on the hendecasyllable, and the other for Philosophy, on free will, leitmotifs that would recur in his works for the span of his…
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Citation: Moser, Amelia. "Massimo Bontempelli". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 January 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12676, accessed 31 October 2024.]
