Notes on “Literary Tabes” and the Textual Configuration of Irony in Guido Gozzano’s Poetics

Abstract

The article analyses the importance in Gozzano’s first work of the theoretical disassembly of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s aestheticism. In fact, once Gozzano discovered the impossibility of the autonomy of aesthetics for the literature of his time, and aware of the difficulty of overcoming D’Annunzio’s work, he placed at the centre of the interests of his artistic creation what he called “Literary Tabes”, which associated to D’Annunzio’s aestheticism, a source of “toxicity” and “falsehood”. Irony as a device will serve in Gozzano’s mature work will be used to combat the falseness of literature, and will give poetry the only possible space in a world that denies any art that is not useful and false.