The problem represented by the south of Italy, which is a question that many politicians and historians (Nitti, Fortunato, Villari, Salvemini, and Gramsci among others), and distinguished writers (like Verga, Capuana and the first Pirandello) have been concerned with, began with the very formation of the national state and could never find a valuable solution within the Italian political context up to the first world war, nor under the fascist regime, which not only failed to give the answers the rural classes of the south of the Country had been waiting for, but it even made things worst by supporting the establishment which already held the power. The first denunciations relating the antiquated conditions and the miserable existence experienced by the farmers living in the south of Italy came sometimes from southern writers, and otherwise from northern authors like Carlo Levi who, exiled by the fascist regime onto the southern territories could directly testify of the very desolated situation of some regions of the south and told about that in his books.
The individual approach was obviously different from one author to another: there were those who, while complaining against the absurdity of the misery and ignorance of the southern farmers, yet couldn’t help feeling confused and astonished in front of this world that appeared to them almost as a mythical reality or as a culture which needed to be protected (Carlo Levi); or those who embraced that world just as a way to escape the void of their own existence (Vittorini, who in a surreal novel tells about the poverty and tribulations of that land); there were those who ironically criticized, always with a smile, the lifestyles of the southern middle-class, its vices, prejudices and inner tragedies (Brancati), and then those who were driven by a specific ideological awareness and who therefore considered the problem of the south of Italy as a characteristic issue of the social conflict (Jovine, Bernari and the first Silone).