Preface and Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION: An Overview of Modern Italian Literature PART I: the Long Eighteenth Century (1690-1815) Chapter One: Cross-currents of modernity §1.1. This is Arcadia §1.2. New states, new thinkers Chapter Two: Enlightenment and the public arena §2.1. Journalism, theatre and the book trade in Venice §2.2.

Enlightenment and reform from Naples to Milan Chapter Three: Literature and revolution §3.1. Italy and France §3.2. Alfieri: life and drama §3.3. Foscolo: between classicism and romanticism PART II: Literature and Unification (1816-1900) Chapter Four: Romantic Italy §4.1.

Milan 1816 §4.2. Florence 1827 §4.3. Leopardi: the challenge of poetry Chapter Five: Inventing the nation §5.1. Manzoni: the responsibility of the writer §5.2.

History and fiction §5.3. Literature and the people §5.4. Memory, monuments and the national past Chapter Six: Making the nation §6.1. the literary culture of Unificaton §6.2.

the artist as observer: verismo and the social §6.3. Looking in: domesticity and the literary market PART III: From modernism to the market (1900 to the present) Chapter Seven: Modernism and the crisis of the literary subject §7. 1. the search for identity §7.2. War, technology and the arts §7.3.

Narratives of selfhood: the subjective turn in fiction Chapter Eight: Literature, Fascism and Anti-Fascism §8.1. Writing and the regime §8.2. the social condition of intellectuals §8.3. Testing the limits of the novel §8.4.

Resistance, Reconstruction and Neo-realism Chapter Nine: From the avant-garde to the market-place §9.1. the last avant-garde? §9.2. the widening of culture §9.3. A minimalist postmodernism: the poetics of attention §9.4.

Epilogue: a weekend in April Primary References Secondary References General Bibliography.