ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the particularity of an Italian context in order to ask, in essence, what is to be gained by introducing the notoriously broad category of modernism into the delineated and precise mix of Italian literarycritical terminology. In order to determine the critical and cultural benefits or advantages of positing an Italian modernism, one must attempt to understand how and why the Italian critical orthodoxy resisted the label for so very long. The Italian literary sphere certainly differs from that which characterized the majority of other western nations caught up in the tumultuous experience of social and technological modernity. A self-consciously novel and experimentally innovative literature of Italian modernity emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century. However, rather than embracing the all-encompassing label of modernism, Italian critics referred to literary groupings and trends such as decadentismo, frammentismo, and futurism.
