The critical perception of the fin de siècle – in the Western world, and particularly in Italy – has long been influenced by a set of notions that were actually coined, as historical and spiritual definitions, in the fin de siècle itself: ‘degeneration’ (popularised, as is well known, by Max Nordau in 1892); ‘neurosis’ (a clinical definition, coming to encompass the attitude of a whole century in Paolo Mantegazza's Il secolo nevrosico of 1887); and, first and foremost, ‘decadence’, initially imposed as a label in a sonnet of 1883 by Paul Verlaine, and later taking on a particular significance in Italian literary criticism, principally thanks to Walter Binni's highly influential La poetica del decadentismo (1936). Definitions as such are always highly problematic, tending to retrospectively superimpose upon a certain age the interpretation that cultural élites have elaborated for the contexts of their own work, thereby silencing cultural experiences that are marginal in relation to dominant models. A book such as The Poetics of Decadence in Fin-de-siècle Italy is welcome for various reasons: but principally because, in coupling ‘degeneration’ with ‘regeneration’ in its subtitle, it indicates its intention to reread fin-de-siècle Italian culture beyond the lenses of decadentismo, and to show how the age of ‘degeneration’ was actually saturated with regenerative drives.

The introduction, by Evangelista only, takes stock of the critical debate on the Italian fin de siècle, providing a careful reconstruction of the origin and developments of critical notions – such as those of degeneration, neurosis, and decadence – that have become commonplaces in critical assessment of the age. The essays comprising the volume, nine in total, each focus on protagonists of the Italian fin de siècle.

The first essay, by Sara Boezio, focuses on ‘Regenerating at the turn of the century’. By reading texts of 1899 by Pascoli and Fogazzaro in parallel with works published in the same year – such as Henrik Ibsen's last play, When We Dead Awaken, Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection, and Émile Zola's Fécondité – the author provides us with a vivid portrait of a turn of the century that is pervaded, alongside rising concerns about degeneration, by a distinct desire for rebirth. Fogazzaro is the protagonist of the two following essays. In ‘Fogazzaro e la “mistica ebbrezza” dell'arte’, by Giulia Brian, the author identifies Fogazzaro as the initiator of an anti-aestheticising approach to art, focused on silence and non-verbal communication rather than action and boasting proclamations. The essay is enriched by two appendices, providing readers with some important documents for assessing Fogazzaro's oeuvre, and particularly the novel Il Santo: an interview of 1908, originally published in La Stampa, and two letters sent to the author by Maud MacCarthy on the topic of theosophy and the portrayal of Madame Blavatsky in his works. In ‘Appunti di lettura sul “Modernismo mistico” nel “dialogo mancato” tra Fogazzaro e Boine’, Elisabetta Selmi reads Fogazzaro's Il Santo in parallel with Giovanni Boine's mysticism, offering a thought-provoking overview of theological-philosophical anxieties around the year 1900.

The essays by Valeria Giannantonio and Patrizia Zambon are largely pervaded by questions of inter-mediality. Giannantonio's ‘Panzacchi e le arti figurative’ explores Panzacchi's conceptualisation of art as a form of mediation between the ideal and the real, viewing the tradition of the Italian Renaissance as a way of confronting modern anxieties, including the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought: rather than using Nietzsche as a model of scepticism, Panzacchi sees the ‘eternal return’ as a possibility of reconciling man and nature through the return of the Renaissance ideal of the ‘total man’. Zambon's ‘Anna Zuccari e il progetto del romanzo simbolista’ reinstates Zuccari's novel writing in the context of European Symbolism, stressing Zuccari's connections – among others – with artists such as Giovanni Segantini, Victor Grubicy de Dragon, and Gaetano Previati.

The seventh and eight essays in the volume are devoted to Gabriele D'Annunzio. Elena Borelli's ‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Gabriele D'Annunzio's novels (1888–1900)’ analyses novels such as Il piacere, L'innocente, Il trionfo della morte, and Il fuoco as battlefields between the Nietzschean exaltation of the ‘will to power’ and Schopenhauer's ideal of art as a sublimation of desire. Aldo Putignano's ‘Alcyone e il simbolismo europeo’ tackles instead D'Annunzio's poetry, showing how the entire collection is meticulously organised in order to convey meaning by means of symbolism, and tracing the presence of different, underlying patterns in the book's composition as well as in recurring metrical choices. The last essay, by Michael Subialka, eventually focuses on what the author terms ‘Diva decadence’: by examining the work of two fin-de-siècle divas, Lyda Borelli and Eleonora Duse, Subialka proposes a new way of reading their cinema performances – and particularly Duse's in Febo Mari's Cenere, of 1916 – as veritable regenerative drives, contrasting with the degeneration that is diegetically portrayed on screen.

Without doubt a starting point of a critical reappraisal of the fin de siècle, this book has a double merit. On the one hand, the essays often maintain a distinctly transnational focus, as is mostly necessary when dealing with an age of intercultural exchanges, massive endeavours in translation, and the growth of a veritably modern cultural industry. On the other, although often moving from the works of single individuals – Antonio Fogazzaro, Enrico Panzacchi, Anna Zuccari, and Gabriele D'Annunzio, being in itself quite telling a canon – the authors approach them within the broader context of the periodical press, the visual arts, and the deeply inter-medial vocation that is peculiar to the age, making this book appealing to a wider audience beyond that of literary studies.