Food has long been considered by anthropologists to be an integral part of self-representation, culture, and identity. The present study investigates the early works of Matilde Serao, focusing on food imagery and culinary customs of the city of Naples. Serao’s fiction and journalistic production reveal a socio-anthropological approach that emphasizes food’s importance within familial and community life. By incorporating documentary and autobiographical elements, the writer offers a unique perspective on the city of Naples and its identity in the late nineteenth century. As we will see, the depiction of food as a socioanthropological construct serves as an effective means to convey important concerns regarding society and history at large, thereby contextualizing Serao’s original place within women’s writing in Italy.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Valentini, D., (2025), "Food and Anthropology in the Early Works of Matilde Serao", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Valentini, Daria. "Food and Anthropology in the Early Works of Matilde Serao." Quaderni d'italianistica 30 (2): 2010. 129-146. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v30i2.11906. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.