The Great War and the Modernist Imagination in Italy

The 17 essays of this volume aim to investigate the transformative impact of the WWI on all aspects of cultural life, while remaining rooted in the specificities and particularities of Italy. By the early 1910s, as the modernist innovation intensified, its language turned increasingly to war and violence, as evidenced by the 1909 Futurist manifesto, a text that exuded aggressiveness and famously declared war "the sole cleanser of the world" (Marinetti). At the same time, the war put into question the role of the modern intellectual. Ultimately, the ability to verbalize or visualize war determined the status of the artists and their capacity to understand, confront and survive the forces of modernity that they had helped to unleash.