Superuomini e no: Dannunzian hypotexts in Capuana’s Rassegnazione

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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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)432–451
JournalForum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies
Volume51
Issue number2
Early online date4 Apr 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 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

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