Italian Modernism

'Italian Modernism is a seminal volume which explores neglected fields of inquiry and points to new interpretive directions for canonical works. The collection includes a variety of approaches to a wide range of issues that cross chronological and disciplinary boundaries, and thus offers to the specialist a rich sample of the latest scholarship on Italian modernism. At the same time, thanks greatly to a thorough, reader-friendly introduction, it provides an invaluable tool for new students. An especially important contribution of the volume is that it underscores the need to examine modernism in light of the cultural discourses that preceded and followed it... It is a landmark contribution to an important, and still very much topical field of inquiry.' -- Cinzia Blum, Department of French and Italian, University of Iowa

Italian Modernism was written in response to the need for an historiographic and theoretical reconsideration of the concepts of Decadentismo and the avant-garde within the Italian critical tradition.

Italian Modernism was written in response to the need for an historiographic and theoretical reconsideration of the concepts of Decadentismo and the avant-garde within the Italian critical tradition. Focussing on the confrontation between these concepts and the broader notion of international modernism, the essays in this important collection seek to understand this complex phase of literary and artistic practices as a response to the epistemes of philosophical and scientific modernity at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first three decades of the twentieth.

Intellectually provocative, this collection is the first attempt in the field of Italian Studies at a comprehensive account of Italian literary modernism. Each contributor documents how previous critical categories, employed to account for the literary, artistic, and cultural experiences of the period, have provided only partial and inadequate descriptions, preventing a fuller understanding of the complexities and the interrelations among the cultural phenomena of the time.