A chronological analysis of the fictional writings of Americans of Italian ancestry, this book constitutes a record of the interaction of two cultures, immigrant and established, within the composition of American civilization. The materials are divided into three parts: the first part contains an analysis of representative autobiographies as a direct comment of the Italian immigrants (accounts of their background, their reasons for emigrating, their problems upon arrival, and their experiences in their attempts at settling in a new country); the second part contains an analysis of the immigrants' fictional treatment of American life up to the contemporary period (the early impact, need for assimilation, revulsion, counterrevulsion, and rooting); and the third part reflects the contemporary period and summarizes the stages of the developments that led to the point of encounter in the interaction of the two cultures (novels of recall, recent Italian immigrant writers, advanced assimilation, novels "out-of-place," conflicts with the law, etc.). In the divisions of part three an attempt is also made to evaluate the Italian-American novel in contemporary American literature. (HOD)