Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity

This book establishes the role of French writer Charles Baudelaire in the formation of paradigms of modernity in Italian poetry between 1857, the year of publication of Baudelaire's highly influential collection Les Fleurs du Mal, and 1912, when the first anthology of Futurist poetry, I poeti futuristi, was published in Milan. It focuses primarily on Baudelaire's influence on the poetry of the Scapigliatura, a long-underrated movement which in the 1860s introduced a thematic and formal modernity into Italian literature, paving the way for Futurism and the twentieth-century avant-garde. This monograph also investigates Baudelaire's and the Scapigliatura's interrelated impacts on early Futurist poetry, demonstrating that Futurist poets turned to the works of Baudelaire and the Scapigliatura for inspiration on themes that were considered as distinctly unpoetic and therefore modern such as medical-anatomical examination, technological transformation, and abnormal sensuality.

Establishes the role of Charles Baudelaire in the formation of a poetics of modernity in Italy Represents the first book written in English to extensively study the poetry of the Scapigliatura Highlights Baudelaire's and the Scapigliatura's interrelated legacies to early 20th-century Italian poetry

Autorentext

Alessandro Cabiati is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and Brown University, USA, where he investigates the ways in which nineteenth-century literary fairy tales contributed to the cultural discourse on psychological deviance and abnormality, while also influencing medical debate. In recent years, he has undertaken research at King's College London and at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh.

Inhalt

Chapter:1.Introducing Modernity: French, Italian, and Comparative Perspectives.- Chapter:2. Unpoetic Poetry and the Rise of Modernity: Science and Medicine in the Scapigliatura.- Chapter:3. Allegory and Modernity in the Scapigliatura.-Chapter:4. Sensual Sacredness and Sacred Sensuality: Love, Sex, and Religion in the Scapigliatura.- Chapter:5.Writing Analogy, Writing Modernity: The Scapigliatura and Baudelaire's Correspondances Synaesthesia and Intoxicating Visions.- Chapter:6. From Organic to Inorganic Matter, From Spirit to Speed: Early Futurist Poetry and the Scapigliatura's Legacy.- Chapter:7. Concluding Modernity: Writing Analogy, Writing Avant-garde.