Decadence and Regeneration in d’Annunzio’s Il piacere (1889)

Abstract

This paper considers the dialectics between national decadence and regeneration in d’Annunzio’s Il piacere. It argues that the novel’s fin-de-siècle reception was conditioned by the author’s prior classification as an immoral, anti-national writer in the wake of the poetry collection Intermezzo di rime. This classification determined a reading of d’Annunzio’s debut novel in terms of decadence, while Il piacere itself actually pointed toward a literature of regeneration. The novel staged d’Annunzio’s opposition to his own prior classification, while making claims for a more committed and more internationally relevant model of Italian literature in the context of European modernity.