The conquest of the stars / Paolo Valesio -- Modernism in Italy: an introduction / Luca Somigli and Mario Moroni -- I: Modernism in context -- Italy and modernity: peculiarities and contradictions / Remo Ceserani -- II: Decadence and aestheticism -- Sensuous maladies: the construction of Italian Decadentismo / Mario Moroni -- D'Annunzio, Duse, Wilde, Bernhardt: author and actress between decadence and modernity / Lucia Re -- Omnes velut aqua dilabimur: Antonio Fogazzaro, The Saint, and catholic modernism / Laura Wittman -- Overcoming aestheticism / Thomas Harrison -- Transtextual patterns: Guido Gozzano between epic and elegy in 'Goa: "La Dourada"' / Cristina Della Coletta -- III: Avant-garde -- Modernism in Florence: the politics of avant-garde culture in the early twentieth century / Walter L. Adamson -- Back to the future: temporal ambivalences in F.T. Marinetti's writings / Enrico Cesaretti -- Ungaretti reader of futurism / Antonio Saccone -- Of thresholds and boundaries: Luigi Pirandello between modernity and modernism / Manuela Gieri -- IV: The return to order: metafisica, novecentismo -- Modernism and the quest for the real: on Massimo Bontempelli's Minnie la candida / Luca Somigli -- De Chirico's heroes: the victors of modernity / Keala Jewell -- Gender, identity, and the return to order in the early works of Paola Masino / Allison A. Cooper -- V: Towards the postmodern -- Representing repetition: appropriation in de Chirico and after / Jennifer Hirsh