In the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Italian poetry experienced an extraordinary heyday. In ten chapters, the present volume provides exemplary insights into this period. English adaptations of selected poems are followed by literary-historical classifications and interpretations against the background of the life and work of the poets concerned.

Dieter Hoffmann, author, literary scholar and translator. 2005 habilitation in literary studies with a thesis on the prose of the absurd. From 1993 to 1998, lecturer in German-language literary history at the Chernyshevsky University in Saratov, Russia. He then taught contemporary literature at various German universities. Since 2012, he has been blogging under the pseudonym"Rotherbaron" on the topics of politics and literature.