Avant-garde Florence : from Modernism to Fascism /

The vitality of avant-garde Florence evident in journals such as Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and L'Italia Futurista has been superbly analyzed through Adamson's meticulous research. The group portrait that emerges, although relating to European modernist movements, has its roots in Tuscan soil, as a reaction to the moderation and complacency of post-unification Florentine society. Rejecting decadence and expressing contempt for bourgeois crassness, the avant-garde sought cultural regeneration and a new spirituality through the printed word. They staged events while absorbing elitist theories and the rhetoric of violence, as many of them became politicized by the Libyan War and WW I. Adamson's excellent prose profiles the personalities and the nuances of the journals, the relationship of Florentine intellectuals to those of Milan and Paris, and the provision of cultural roots for fascism. Using material drawn from Florentine repositories and the Prezzolini archives in Lugano, this invaluable study adds signficantly to lesser-known aspects of fin-de-si`ecle Italy. Recommended for college, university, and art institute libraries. M. S. Miller; University of Illinois at Chicago

Adamson (intellectual history, Emory Univ.) offers a clear and compelling group biography of the working-class intellectuals who brought Florence into the ``modernist project of . . . liberating the primal instincts that modern civilization had covered over and creating a new modern culture adequate to them. This is largely an account of avant-garde publishing and publishers living and working in Florence from about 1880 to 1930. As such, it provides almost unique coverage; most studies of this city are of another time, and studies of this time generally address intellectual life in other areas of Europe or America. While it is valuable to scholars and students, this work is accessible to educated lay readers as well. For academic and large public libraries.-- Francisca Gold smith, Berkeley P.L., Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.