Narrating Science Between Positivism and the Fin-de-Siècle Crisis

Notes on Some of Paolo Lioy’s Journalistic Writings

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the periodical press represented the primary arena for literary experimentation, and Italian prose evolved in part through its interaction with journalistic forms of communication. Journalism, in turn, assimilated strategies drawn from narrative fiction, a macro-genre that came to dominate all others. This article highlights the processes of hybridization between essayistic and narrative writing through an analysis of several articles by Paolo Lioy published in Fanfulla della Domenica. In particular, scientific popularization adopted narrative strategies derived from literary fiction in order to make complex content accessible to an expanding middle-class readership. This reveals a significant trend in late nineteenth-century culture: the gradual transformation of popular science from a pedagogical and social instrument into a form of entertainment aimed at mass consumption, anticipating the crisis of positivism that would fully emerge in the new century.