Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity

Alessandro Cabiati is a Marie Skłodowska-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.

• 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.

“This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the development of European modernism at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and for anyone interested in discovering the influence of Baudelaire on the evolution of Italian modernity.” (Selena Daly, Modern Language Review, Vol. 120 (1), January, 2025) “Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity, Alessandro Cabiati thus fills a significant gap in our literary history, but this is only the first and most obvious distinction of a study that marks a major contribution to scholarship on the Scapigliatura and nineteenth-century Italian poetry in general. … It is, without a doubt, a major contribution to the history and aesthetics of Italian modern(ist) poetry.” (Luca Somigli, Italica, Vol. 101 (2), 2024)