Abstract
Parallels have long been noted between Luigi Capuana’s novel Rassegnazione (1907) and D’Annunzio’s Le vergini delle rocce (1895), both of which recount an attempt to breed a Nietzschean superuomo. There is disagreement, however, as to whether Capuana parodies or emulates his source. This article argues that previous analyses err in seeing both D’Annunzio’s aesthetics and Capuana’s response to them as unchanging. It shows that Rassegnazione polemically contrasts the protagonists of D’Annunzio’s early Romanzi della Rosa
with his later superuomini, and reacts not to a monolithic dannunzianesimo but to D’Annunzio’s evolving thought and practice. Reading the novel against Capuana’s intense critical engagement with D’Annunzio’s fiction from Il piacere
(1889) to Il fuoco (1900), and charting the presence of several significant Dannunzian hypotexts, it concludes that while Capuana clearly debunks
superomismo, he does not definitively reject D’Annunzio’s ideal of art-in-life.
with his later superuomini, and reacts not to a monolithic dannunzianesimo but to D’Annunzio’s evolving thought and practice. Reading the novel against Capuana’s intense critical engagement with D’Annunzio’s fiction from Il piacere
(1889) to Il fuoco (1900), and charting the presence of several significant Dannunzian hypotexts, it concludes that while Capuana clearly debunks
superomismo, he does not definitively reject D’Annunzio’s ideal of art-in-life.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 432–451 |
Journal | Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies |
Volume | 51 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 4 Apr 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2017 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- Luigi Capuana
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
- Decadence
- I romanzi della Rosa
- Il fuoco
- Le vergini delle rocce
- reception
- superman