Neoavanguardia

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Gian-Maria Annovi (University of Southern California)

Ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.1: Italian Writing and Culture, 453-present.
Vol. editors: Carla Bregman (Independent Scholar - North America), Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University)

Domains

Movements, styles and periods (literature)

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1956- c.1969

Places

Italy (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The term

neoavanguardia

(neo-avant-garde) refers to an experimental literary movement that originated in Italy at the end of the 1950s as a reaction to the backwardness of Italian culture following the euphoria of the immediate postwar years. Among the characteristics of the Italian neo-avant-garde are a vehement critique of mass culture and rebellion against the oppressive ideology and language of the dominant bourgeois discourse.

After WWII Italy moved slowly from a rural to an industrial economy, becoming one of the major industrial nations of the West. In the context of this economic boom, while in the rest of Europe and North America the artistic scene was thriving, worn-out literary tendencies continued to dominate the Italian cultural arena. On the one hand, poetry was heavily

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2384 words

Citation: Annovi, Gian-Maria. "Neoavanguardia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 November 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=17674, accessed 25 April 2024.]

Save this article