Modern Italian Literature
Cultural History of Literature
1. Edition October 2007
248 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
This authoritative and vividly written book brings readers into the
heart of Italian literary culture from the 1690s to the present. It
probes the work of major authors in their broad cultural context,
traces the history of audiences and publishers, explores the
shifting relationship between public and private, assesses the
impact of significant historical trends and events on creative
processes, and establishes the continuities as well as the
discontinuities of the Italian literary tradition.
A synoptic overview at the beginning of the volume is designed
to help the reader get her or his bearings in the detail of the
nine chapters which follow. Using an essentially chronological
framework, the book is divided into three major cultural
time-spans: the long eighteenth century, the decades of national
identity formation and the creation of modern', industrial Italy
between 1816 and 1900, and the twentieth century with its constant
renegotiation of national cultural identity. A final epilogue
provides a snapshot of Italian literary culture in the
near-present.
This is a book which will be readily accessible to students and
all those interested in Italian culture, and at the same time is
based on the most up-to-date scholarship. New readings of the
canonical authors rub shoulders with a refreshing attention to
standard and popular writing, gender issues, and the interaction
between written and oral forms, producing a history of modern
Italian literature which is new in its conception and its
scope.
INTRODUCTION: An Overview of Modern Italian Literature
PART I: The Long Eighteenth Century (1690-1815)
Chapter One: Cross-currents of modernity
1.1. This is Arcadia
1.2. New states, new thinkers
Chapter Two: Enlightenment and the public arena
2.1. Journalism, theatre and the book trade in Venice
2.2. Enlightenment and reform from Naples to Milan
Chapter Three: Literature and revolution
3.1. Italy and France
3.2. Alfieri: life and drama
3.3. Foscolo: between classicism and romanticism
PART II: Literature and Unification (1816-1900)
Chapter Four: Romantic Italy
4.1. Milan 1816
4.2. Florence 1827
4.3. Leopardi: the challenge of poetry
Chapter Five: Inventing the nation
5.1. Manzoni: the responsibility of the writer
5.2. History and fiction
5.3. Literature and the people
5.4. Memory, monuments and the national past
Chapter Six: Making the nation
6.1. The literary culture of Unificaton
6.2. The artist as observer: verismo and the social
6.3. Looking in: domesticity and the literary market
PART III: From modernism to the market (1900 to the present)
Chapter Seven: Modernism and the crisis of the literary subject
7. 1. The search for identity
7.2. War, technology and the arts
7.3. Narratives of selfhood: the subjective turn in fiction
Chapter Eight: Literature, Fascism and Anti-Fascism
8.1. Writing and the regime
8.2. The social condition of intellectuals
8.3. Testing the limits of the novel
8.4. Resistance, Reconstruction and Neo-realism
Chapter Nine: From the avant-garde to the market-place
9.1. The last avant-garde?
9.2. The widening of culture
9.3. A minimalist postmodernism: the poetics of attention
9.4. Epilogue: a weekend in April
Primary References
Secondary References
General Bibliography
history, this volume provides a highly readable overview of modern
Italian literature, which ranges from the eighteenth century to
today. A most valuable study for both experts and
students."
Rebecca West, University of Chicago
"A brilliant book that moves with agility through the
centuries, authors, and historical events. It is a cultural and
literary guide that any student of Italian should rely
on."
Graziella Parati, Dartmouth College
"This is a superb, stimulating and lucid work of
synthesis, tracing the evolution of Italian literature from the
late seventeenth century to the present day. As well as revisiting
major figures and others lost in the archive, the book uses the
literary field to explore a fascinating series of subterranean
patterns in Italy's modern cultural history."
Robert Gordon, University of Cambridge
University of Warwick.
Michael Caesar is Serena Professor of Italian at the
University of Birmingham.
