SOURCE: Rosengarten, Frank. “A Crucial Decade in the Career of Vasco Pratolini (1932-1942).” Modern Language Notes 79 (1964): 28-46.

In the following essay, Rosengarten defines an important transitional decade in Pratolini's life by examining his literary reviews and essays on political and social questions.

By reason of his prominent position in contemporary Italian letters, Vasco Pratolini has been the subject of an extraordinarily large number of articles and critical essays. He has been frequently interviewed by the editors and critics of Epoca, L'Europeo, La Fiera Letteraria, and other Italian magazines. His novels and short stories have been translated into many languages, and articles on various aspects of his career have appeared in a host of foreign newspapers and journals.

In examining the critical work that has thus far been done on Pratolini, one is struck by the discovery that although his life and works from 1945 to the present have been...