At the beginning of the 20th century, marinetti advocated futurism, completely negated traditional culture, and advocated a new era characterized by urban machine civilization with free and uninhibited new means, which was popular in all fields of literature and art for a while and spread to other countries. Futurism did not produce valuable works, but it had an impact on European and American modernist literature and art, and made a breakthrough in exploring new artistic expression means. At the same time, another school of poetry, the Dark School, also appeared in the literary world. The works of this school of poets are diametrically opposed to Gabriele Dannunzio's gorgeous and grandiose poems advocating Superman.
Seclusion is also an important school of poetry that prevailed in the 1920s and 1930s. The representative poets are Genio Montalais (1896~ 198 1), Zhu zepei Weng Garetti (1888~ 1970) and Salvador Kwachi. Hermit poets avoid the major themes of real life, use symbolism and distinctive artistic images to express "the evil of life" and portray the subtle feelings and instant feelings of people's inner world. Hermit poems show the oppressed mental state of the middle and small bourgeoisie and reflect people's consciousness of pursuing democracy and safeguarding dignity. The storm of the resistance movement pushed poets such as Kwazimodo out of seclusion and turned to writing social poems. The hermit school has left a distinct mark on the works of many modern Italian poets.
With futurism, the hermit's opponent is Gabriele Dannunzio, Pirandello. Gabrielle Gabriele Dannunzio (1863~ 1938) wrote a series of aesthetical novels and dramas, which showed the conflict between art and environment and portrayed the morbid psychology of egoists. As Italy entered the stage of imperialism, Gabriele Dannunzio also became an advocate of militarism, praising "Superman" who shouldered the ruling mission, advocating national chauvinism and taking fascism as the goal. Gabriele Dannunzio's aestheticism works are all the rage and are imitated by many writers.
Luigi Pirandello (1867~ 1936) was influenced by realism in his early works. His novels, especially grotesque plays (six dramatists looking for the author,1921; The theme of Henry IV (1922) is the conflict between man and reality, ego and mask, which breaks the norms of traditional drama, describes absurd events in absurd environment, and shows that people exposed to chaotic objective reality are forced to put on various masks and seek truth in illusion, but they lose themselves forever. Pirandello's grotesque plays express the depression and anguish of the petty bourgeoisie when Italy turned from imperialism to fascism and social contradictions were extremely acute.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Voice and Sentinel, two famous literary publications, gathered writers and critics to explore new artistic expressions under the banner of establishing a "new culture". They draw lessons from European modernist literature and art, or take self-consciousness as the center of their works, or pursue pure artistic beauty, and later derive a school of "artistic prose" that is divorced from reality and obsessed with form. 1945 is a turning point in modern Italian history. The anti-fascist resistance movement buried the reactionary and dark Mussolini regime and ushered in the birth of the first constitutional republic. The democratic movement for social equality and progress is rising all over the country. In this case, new realism literature came into being.
Neo-realist writers inject the passion and ideal of the resistance movement into literature. They take the anti-fascist struggle, the "southern issue" or the daily life of working people in the early post-war period as the theme, and make real descriptions, striving to make literary works become artistic documents describing historical truth and severe post-war reality. They created a new hero in the history of Italian literature. Neo-realism exposed the social tragedy in real life and shouted out the voice of the lower class people demanding survival and longing for social equality and democracy. Neo-realism is a denial of fascist literature that beautified and praised reality during Mussolini's reign, in contrast to literature that avoided reality or reflected it in a tortuous way. It inherited the realistic literary tradition and opened up a new road for Italian literature.
The achievements of many writers after the war are related to neo-realism to some extent. Vasco Pratolini (19 13~) describes social life, and traces of "artistic prose" can be seen in his early works. Miserable Couples (1947) and Mateiro (1955) are representative works of postwar realism, describing the arduous and tortuous development of the Italian workers' movement and the life, love and heroic struggle of the younger generation against fascism. Elio Vittorini (1908~ 1966) was a rising star writer in 1930s. He combined realistic description with abstract concepts, trying to reveal the essence of fascist regime from a moral point of view and show the conflict between "humanity" and harsh reality (man and inhumanity,1945; The woman of Messina, 1949). Italo calvino (1923~) is a prolific writer. Whether his works express the resistance movement by writing non-heroes or reflect the alienation of people in modern society with the help of bizarre plots, they all contain meditation on the fate of people and society. The poems and novels of Chezhage Pavezer (1908~ 1950) express the love for the country and childhood and the pursuit of life, reveal the desperate loneliness of people in a hypocritical and depraved society and reflect on the pain of life.
Qiao Erqiao Basagni (19 16~) is a writer from a Jewish family. His novels describe the unfortunate lives of ordinary people in his hometown of Ferrara, or describe the sufferings of Jews during the war and fascist rule. The novel Leopard (1958) by the famous Sicilian writer Zhu Zepei Tomaz di lampedusa (1896~ 1957) shows the rise of the national rejuvenation movement and the decline of the feudal aristocracy through the decline of an aristocratic family.
Alberto Moravia (1907~) is the most famous writer in modern Italy. The 50-year-long creation from Cold Man (1929) to Inner Life (1978) has profoundly exposed that this class is increasingly losing its ideals and falling into an irreparable ideological crisis, showing the sharp contradiction between rich material life and poor spiritual life in the deformed "welfare society" in the West. Moravia was influenced by Freud's theory, and the influence of resistance movement and neo-realism can be seen in some works.
Leonardo Sasha (192 1~) is good at writing social and political novels, exposing the crimes of social dark forces and attacking the ruling groups and political parties, which is unique in modern literature.
Buzati and Morantai are two other writers with unique artistic styles. Dino Buzzatti's works (1906~ 1972) are characterized by surrealism. Through mysterious events, they allude to the gap between people and society, people's confusion, fear instinct, and the pain of waiting for irresistible disasters. Elsa Morantai (19 18~), a female writer, is good at delicate psychological analysis, combining realism with symbolism, showing the deep imprint of violence on people's hearts and full of reflections on people's life experiences.
With the high development of monopoly capitalism, in recent years, a number of writers have appeared to write industrial themes. Autiero Autieri (1924~) has been working in monopoly enterprises for a long time, and his novels and essays are all about the destruction of industrial development to people. Vittorio Seregni (19 13~) was a hermit poet in his early years and worked in a monopoly group of Pirelli after the war. His poems tell about the trauma caused by the huge and ruthless industrial gear to people's hearts.
In the field of drama, the famous screenwriter, director and actor Eduardo de Filippo (1900~) wrote many comedies in dialect, among which the most successful works showed the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, mocked the vulgarity and selfishness of ordinary people and criticized the unjust social phenomenon. Dario Buddha (1926~) is another dramatic artist with great influence. He abandoned the norms of orthodox drama, absorbed nutrition from "impromptu comedy" and drew lessons from European modernist drama, and created many political satires, lashing out at the capitalist system and its superstructure. Croce and Gramsci are the most influential figures in the field of literary theory. Benedetto croce (1866~ 1952) is an important representative of bourgeois literary theory in the 20th century. From the idealistic point of view that reality belongs to spiritual life, he puts forward the theory that intuition is art. On the one hand, he regards literature and art as a reflection of people's feelings, pointing out that although artistic creation interacts with political and economic activities, they are independent, emphasizing the special attributes and laws of literature and art; On the other hand, it holds that feeling precedes ideas and actions, advocates the creation of "pure poetry" which is divorced from life and separated from content and form, and denies the artistic generalization of literary works to social life and the guiding role of writers' world outlook in creation. Croce's works in philosophy, history, aesthetics, literary history and literary criticism have had a far-reaching impact on western thought and literary theorists.
Gramsci Antonio (189 1~ 1937) is the leader of the Italian * * * production party. Most of his theoretical works on literature and art were written in prison, which mainly criticized the bourgeois idealistic view of literature and art and Croce's view that art is intuition, adhered to the principle of historical materialism and proletarian party spirit, put forward the slogan of creating "literature between nations and people", and brilliantly expounded the relationship between the content and form of his works and the task of literary criticism. At the same time, it analyzes and discusses many classic writers and important literary phenomena in the 20th century. Gramsci laid the foundation of Italian Marxist literary theory.