We are pleased to announce that the project’s book volume, D’Annunzio and World Literature: Multilingualism, Translation, Reception, is under contract with Edinburgh University Press and forthcoming.
Gabriele d’Annunzio was an internationally renowned artist of literary decadence and modernism, one of the few Italian authors of his generation whose translation and reception occurred as he wrote – not only James Joyce and Henry James, but prominent figures from France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Israel, North Africa, Japan, the USA, Argentina, and beyond were fascinated and inspired by his works. D’Annunzio thus became a pivotal node in networks of decadent exchange across the world.
This volume offers the first examination of the global dynamics of D’Annunzio’s work, from the role of world literature in his formation and engagement with multilingualism and translingual writing to the international circulation and reception of his multi-genre production. Featuring chapters by prominent international scholars whose work has not previously reached an Anglophone audience, the volume re-evaluates D’Annunzio with a critical eye and a transnational scope. The world literature framework allows a global account not only of this figure but also of the place that Dannunzian decadence holds in a larger, conflicted artistic tendency – one that is profoundly cosmopolitan and yet also problematically nationalistic, bridging aesthetic and political modernity in provocative but challenging ways.
Bringing together nearly two-dozen scholars from across the world, the volume encompasses the following topics or thematic groupings in particular:
I. From the Aegean to the Amazon: D’Annunzio’s “Outward” Gaze
II. Cosmopolitanism and the Fascination with Dialect: Multilingualism and Translingual Writing
III. D’Annunzio and his Translators
IV. D’Annunzio’s Global Fin-de-siècle Reception
V. Complex Legacies
More information will be provided as the volume nears completion. Any scholars interested in participating in the project who have not yet been involved are warmly invited to contact the editors, Elisa Segnini and Michael Subialka.