Gabriele d'Annunzio and Italy's Renaissance

This book examines how Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) reimagined the Renaissance as a metaphor for Italy’s national rebirth. Rather than a nostalgic revival, the Renaissance became, in his hands, a future-oriented ideological project that served as the backbone of his ethnonationalist worldview. Tracing how modernist temporality intersects with historical mythmaking and nationalist discourse, the book positions D’Annunzio within broader European debates on decadence, modernity, and regeneration. It also reconsiders his role as a public intellectual whose mythmaking shaped Italy’s cultural identity and modern ambitions. By highlighting the strategic mobilization of tradition, this study assesses the significance of D’Annunzio’s Renaissance ideology within the cultural politics of European modernism. In an era of resurgent far-right ideologies and nationalist imaginaries across Europe and beyond, revisiting figures like D’Annunzio is essential to understanding how historical myths have shaped past political narratives and continue to influence those of the present.

Guylian Nemegeer is an FWO-funded postdoctoral fellow in Literary Studies at Ghent University, Belgium. His research focuses on the discourses and ideologies that shaped Italian and French literature and culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.