Description
Book SynopsisD’Annunzio’s hybrid experiments challenge Wagner’s ‘total artwork’ theories, search for a synthesis between pictorial stillness and filmic movement, and anticipate contemporary multimedia experiences. Ending suddenly at the outbreak of the Great War, Dannunzian total artworks have generated a controversial legacy that calls for renewed critical investigations.
Trade Review“Mirabile’s study produces a compelling claim that D’Annunzio’s French plays are “total artworks” or Gesamtkunstwerke following the aesthetic ideals of Wagner, and that they “test the distinction between the literary, the musical, and the visual” (25). The book offers a rigorous comparatist framework from which to reexamine D’Annunzio’s works from his period in France, a prolific set of writings that have been overshadowed by the salacious elements of his life and political affiliations, which included an awkward alliance with Mussolini. […] Multimedia Archaeologies invites us to not only consider D’Annunzio’s verse-plays as exemplary of an entire current in modernism, but also to weigh the complex legacy of the long nineteenth century and its total artwork, whose shadow continues to cast itself in the field of aesthetics.” - Ronjaunee Chatterjee, University of California, in: Comparative Literature Studies 53.1 (2016), pp. 12-14
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Decadence of Decadence The Verbal: Saint Sebastian, Adonis, and Christ The Visual: Aesthetic/Ecstatic The Musical: Music for the Eyes Multimedia Archaeologies: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Belle Époque Paris, and the Total Artwork Works Cited
