The aim of this course is to study the artistic evolution of modernity and modernism in Italy beginning with the fin-de-siècle culture (Verismo writers, Macchiaioli painters, philosophy of Positivism), moving to the so-called Decadence (Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D’Annunzio) and the avant-garde of Futurism (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and some of the manifestos of that avant-garde, painters such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini) as its counter-part. The course will then consider some artistic and literary endeavors that proved to be essential to twentieth-century culture such as Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello, Hermetic poetry, existentialist (Alberto Moravia) and Neo-realist (Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini) writings.

-Material for the course will provided by the instructor