Fortunato Pasqualino was an Italian novelist, philosopher, playwright and journalist.
Life and career
Born into a poor family in
Butera
Butera ( Sicilian: ''Vutera'') is an Italian town and a ''comune'' in the province of Caltanissetta, in the southern part of the island of Sicily. It is bounded by the ''comuni'' of Gela, Licata, Mazzarino, Ravanusa and Riesi. It has a populatio ...
,
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
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, Pasqualino left the school at 10 years old to work as a laborer in orange groves; as an adolescent he reprised his studies, first as an autodidact and then with the help of some teachers, and was able to get a
Liceo classico diploma
A diploma is a document awarded by an educational institution (such as a college or university) testifying the recipient has graduated by successfully completing their courses of studies. Historically, it has also referred to a charter or offici ...
.
[Vincenzo Caporale (2014).]
Pasqualino, Fortunato
. '' Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani'', Volume 81. Treccani
The ''Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti'' (Italian for "Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Letters, and Arts"), best known as ''Treccani'' for its developer Giovanni Treccani or ''Enciclopedia Italiana'', is an Italian-language en ...
. After the war he graduated in philosophy at the
University of Catania
The University of Catania ( it, Università degli Studi di Catania) is a university located in Catania, Sicily. Founded in 1434, it is the oldest university in Sicily, the 13th oldest in Italy, and the 29th oldest university in the world. With a ...
, and moved to
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...
where he worked as a professor of philosophy, pedagogy and psychology. He later was employed at
RAI, where he worked as a journalist, a television writer and occasionally as a presenter.
He started his literary activity in the late 1940s, and after several philosophical works he got his breakout in 1963 with the autobiographical novel ''Adamo in Sicilia'' ("Adam in Sicily"), which won a
Flaiano Prize and was finalist at the
Premio Campiello.
Other important works were ''Diario di un metafisico'' ("Diary of a metaphysician", 1964), a compendium of philosophical reflections in a narrative form, and ''The little Jesus of Sicily'' (''Il giorno che fui Gesù'', literally "The day I was Jesus", 1977).
In 1978 he won the
Flaiano Prize for the stage play ''Socrate baccante'' ("Socrates Bacchante").
His last book was ''Chiunque tu sia. Con Gesù a passo d’asino'' ("Whoever you are. With Jesus at donkey pace", 2005).
Always interested in the
Opera dei Pupi, a theatrical genre he treated in several books,
in 1968 he founded and directed with his brother Giuseppe an Opera dei Pupi theatre in
Trastevere, Rome, which was active until the early 1990s.
He was also a collaborator of newspapers and philosophical and literary magazines, and a professor of philosophy of entertainment at the
Pro Deo University.
References
External links
Fortunato Pasqualinoat
Open Library
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pasqualino, Fortunato
1923 births
2008 deaths
People from the Province of Caltanissetta
20th-century Italian philosophers
20th-century Italian novelists
21st-century Italian novelists
20th-century essayists
21st-century Italian essayists
Italian journalists
Italian dramatists and playwrights
Italian television writers
University of Catania alumni
Academic staff of the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli
21st-century Italian philosophers