Alberto Moravia e l'idea del personaggio come «forma del giudizio morale»

Alberto Moravia made his debut in 1926 as a critic even before as a writer with an article on James Joyce, followed in 1927 by another article on the crisis of novel: thus began his long reflection on this genre and literary characters, which would span a decade marked by intense literary debates. In the aftermath of the publication of his first work, Moravia had a clear idea of the purpose of the novel and the novelist: to create characters with specific moral qualities and to express a critical judgment on the world. This paper therefore aims to focus on some essays published by Moravia in journals and magazines such as «Il Quarto Stato», «L'Italia Letteraria», «Oggi» and «Prospettive», in order to reconstruct the defining features of Moravia's notion of character, which in 1941 reached full maturity in the article L'uomo e il personaggio.