THE IDEA OF MODERNITY IN ITALIAN LITERATURE AT THE TURN OF THE 19th AND 20th CENTURIES
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2016, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
The article analyzes various concepts of modernity in Italian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Modernity is considered a key category of the literary process of the period: different views of modernity reveal philosophical, historical, and aesthetic ideas of the major authors and literary currents. The term modernity in its relation to Italy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries may be understood in two different ways: as a specifc time period after the unifcation of Italy and as an aesthetic ideal, both reachable and unreachable. Modernity as a historical period is inseparable from the sense of disappointment and awareness of Italian backwardness and provincialism. The Scapigliati manifest their socio-critical position as a Romantic conflict between individual and society, Verism represents the same idea as a tragic clash of traditional peasant world and modernity that is destroying it. Luigi Pirandello belongs to the same socio-critical tradition. The sense of weariness and decadence is one of the aspects of modern worldview: Gabriele D’Annunzio expresses it in the form of decadent aestheticism; the Crepusculars reject modernity and replace it with the idea of everyday life; Luigi Pirandello puts a special emphasis on the state of perplexity and confusion experienced by a modern man. From the aesthetic point of view, modernity in Italy begins as a struggle against Romanticism; however, here we encounter the controversial nature of the concept again. Giosue Carducci and the Scapigliati reject Italian Romanticism but turn to European Romanticism trying to overcome Italian cultural backwardness. A Verist writer Luigi Capuana elaborates a positivist ideal of modern literature and yet abandons it later. D’Annunzio sees the ideal of modern art in restoring cultural continuity. Futurists, on the contrary, understand modernity as breaking with tradition. Thus, all aesthetic interpretations of modernity in Italy focus on one intention — to overcome Italian backwardness and isolation and make Italy part of European culture again.
Authors and Affiliations
Anastasia V. Golubtsova
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26084
- DOI 10.22455/ 2500-4247-2016-1-1-2-153-170
- Views 640
- Downloads 22
THE PLACE OF CARNIVAL IN THE CONTEXT OF MIKHAIL BAKHTIN’S PHILOSOPHY
The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in Bakhtin’s philosophy is a perennial concern in Bakhtin studies. Indeed, how would one reconcile such ideas as the carniva...
Gorky’s Work and the Rise of Social Realism
In 1932, the Communist party ideologists called Maxim Gorky the founder of socialist realism at the behest of Stalin. This tag has turned into an ideological cliché that accompanies the writer’s image even in the prese...
MEREZHKOVSKY’S THE FOURTEENTH OF DECEMBER: A NOVEL ABOUT THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
The article demonstrates how Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in his novel The Fourteenth of The article demonstrates how Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in his novel The Fourteenth of December written in the midst of the revolution...
PORTRAIT IN LITERATURE AND GRAPHIC ART: THE CASE OF THE FIERY ANGEL
This essay analyzes portraits in several editions of The Fiery Angel published during Bryusov’s lifetime and claims that the portrait was as a universal point of convergence for verbal and visual arts. The dialogue bet...
Stylistic Originality of Spenser’s Epithalamion and its Reflection in Russian and Chinese Translations
Contemporary notion of style as a set of rules that allows the author choose and combine the elements of content and form when producing a literary work (V.V. Vinogradov, A.N. Sokolov et al.) was in many respects prefi...