Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde

Luca Somigli · Mario Moroni

Dec 2004 · University of Toronto Press

About this ebook

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.

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About the author

Luca Somigli is an associate professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Mario Moroni is the Paul and Marilyn Paganucci assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at Colby College.