Giovanni Pascoli, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and the Ethics of Desire

Elena Borelli is assistant professor of Italian at the City University of New York.

• DedicationAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Desire in the Italian Fin de Siècle: Between Evolutionism and AestheticismChapter 2: Action or Contemplation? The Role of the Artist in Fin de Siècle ItalyChapter 3: Giovanni Pascoli’s Divine Comedy: a Poem of DesireChapter 4: The Male Hero and the Evolution of Desire in D’Annunzio’s NovelsChapter 5: Giovanni Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali and the Shipwreck of DesireChapter 6: The Centaur of Modernity of the Body Without DesireConclusionBibliography

Although its title specifically refers to Pascoli and d’Annunzio, this book offers a wide examination of the whole late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian cultural milieu, which is looked at through a specific philosophical lens. . . . This is a very interesting book not only for scholars of d’Annunzio and Pascoli, but for anyone interested in fin-de-siècle Italian culture and in the ways in which philosophical debates impact on artists’ aesthetics.