Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was the author of many influential novels and remains one of the most significant Italian women writers of her time. However, critics tend to pigeonhole her works into convenient literary categories and to ignore the uniqueness of her style and voice. Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity offers a timely and thought-provoking interpretation of this Nobel laureate, examining her work in the context of European philosophical and literary modernity.

Margherita Heyer-Caput takes a philosophical and philological approach in order to provide a reassessment of Deledda's position in the literary canon. At the same time, she raises the larger issue of the status of allegedly 'regional' or 'minor' literatures within the context of Italian modernity. Dealing with four novels representative of Deledda's vast corpus, Heyer-Caput addresses and dismantles elements of regionalismo, verismo, and decadentismo, labels with which Deledda's works are regularly associated. This is the first volume to introduce some of Deledda's overlooked texts to an Anglophone audience. It invites readers to overturn established critical categories and to question margin-centre hierarchies both in the broad context of literary modernity and the narrower frame of Deledda?s writing.

Grazia Deledda's Dance of Modernity is a highly original and innovative interpretation of Deledda's narrative in philosophical perspective, which also includes the study of textual variations and considers cultural history in Italy during the early twentieth century. It is a much-needed examination of an important writer and how she managed to construct her own literary and gender identity in the context of modernity.

Margherita Heyer-Caput is an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of California, Davis.

Awards

Winner - Ennio Flaiano Prize for Italian Studies
Honourable Mention - AAIS Book Prize - American Association of Italian Studies

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 ‘On the Way’ to Modernity: La via del male

• 1.1 From L’indomabile to La via del male: Social Mission and Positivism
  • 1.1.a A Social (and Literary) Mission
  • 1.1.b The ‘Scuola positiva di diritto penale’
• 1.2 From La via del male (1896) as The Path to Evil to La via del male (1906) as The Path of Evil
  • 1.2.a Linguistic Changes: Against Approximation
  • 1.2.b Linguistic Changes: Against ‘Aulicismo’
• 1.3 From La via del male (1906) to La via del male (1916): Inconsistent Revision or Intellectual Independence?
• 1.4 Toward Formal ‘Simplification’ (Herczeg) and Modernity
• 1.5 Toward the ‘Unified’ Italian Middle Class
• 1.6 Toward the Proliferation of Interpretations
• 1.7 Thematic Changes toward Modernity
  • 1.7.a The Journey Theme
  • 1.7.b The Madness Motif
  • 1.7.c The Radical Openness
• 1.8 Structural Changes
  • 1.8.a Language, Culture, and Power
  • 1.8.b Female Point of View and Open Ending
  • 1.8.c Language and Open Journey
• 1.9 A Partial Conclusion

2 The Transgressive Rewriting of the Novel of Formation: Cenere

• 2.1 Cenere: Whose Bildungsroman?
• 2.2 Cenere as a Male Bildungsroman
• 2.3 Intertextuality and Male Bildungsroman
• 2.4 Nietzsche’s Moral Critique and Bildungsroman
• 2.5 Cenere as a Female Bildungsroman
• 2.6 Cenere’s Revisions and the Rewriting of the Bildungsroman
• 2.7 Deledda and the ‘Seventh Art’
• 2.8 Duse’s Cenere and the Resymbolization of the Female Bildungsroman
• 2.9 A Partial Conclusion

3 Active Nihilism and Nietzsche’s Uebermensch: Il segreto dell’uomo solitario

• 3.1 Nietzsche Reception in Italy during the Early 1900s
• 3.2 Open Narrative Structure and Metaphorical ‘S’
• 3.3 Nietzschean Themes of Modernity
  • 3.3.a Mind and Body
  • 3.3.b The Notion of Truth
  • 3.3.c The Secret of Madness
  • 3.3.d Active Nihilism
• 3.4 Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
• 3.5 Toward a Morality of Modernity: A Partial Conclusion

4 Passive Nihilism and Schopenhauer’s Contemplator: La danzadella collana

• 4.1 The ‘Scarnificazione’ of the Narrative Structure
• 4.2 Topoi of Modernity: The Double and the Mask
• 4.3 Schopenhauerian Themes of Modernity
  • 4.3.a The Dualism between Phenomenon and Noumenon
  • 4.3.b The Aesthetics of Contemplation and Music
  • 4.3.c The Ethics of Compassion and Asceticism
• 4.4 A Step Back: Schopenhauer’s Veil and Deledda’s Colombi e sparvieri
• 4.5 Schopenhauer Reception in Italy during the Early 1900s
• 4.6 Schopenhauerian Themes of Modernity and La danza della collana
  • 4.6.a The Oscillation between Phenomenon and Noumenon
  • 4.6.b The Letter Episode and the Liberation from Illusions
  • 4.6.c The Ultimate Liberation through Asceticism
  • 4.6.d The Liberatory Role of Music in Deledda’s Dance of and with Modernity
• 4.7 An Open-Ended Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index