Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1765-1969)

In reconstructing the history of Modern Spiritualism, scholars have largely focused on its Anglo-American, French, and German developments, often overlooking the Italian context. Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1765-1969) challenges this perspective by examining the Italian case as a space of intersection between transnational currents of thought and deeply rooted cultural traditions. From the Enlightenment to the occult revival of the 1960s, Modern Spiritualism in Italy engaged with scientific discourse, philosophical speculation, literary imagination, and Catholic doctrine, producing a hybrid intellectual landscape that remains largely understudied. This volume traces the circulation and transformation of spiritualist ideas across different media and disciplines, analyzing their impact on literature, psychology, and science. By situating Italy within the broader European and transatlantic networks of occult knowledge, Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture provides a new vantage point from which to rethink the historical evolution of modernity, belief, and the supernatural.

Gennaro Ambrosino (MA ’Modern Philology’, University of Rome ’La Sapienza’; MA ’Western Literature’, KU Leuven) is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick. His doctoral research examines the intersections of archaeology, geology, and theories of the ’unconscious’ in Italian culture from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. He has published and presented on the interplay between 19th- century archaeological and geological discourses and literary imagery, with a particular focus on Giacomo Leopardi (Cahiers d’études italiennes, 40, 2025). His research interests also include Mesmerism and Spiritualism in Italy during the long 19th century. On this topic, he has published peer-reviewed articles in Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani (37, 2022) and Enthymema (27, 2021). Additionally, he has been actively involved in academic event organization, including the international conference Spiritismo e letteratura italiana tra il Settecento e il Duemila (KU Leuven, 29-30 September 2023).

Fabio Camilletti is a Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Warwick. His academic training took place at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, St John’s College Oxford, Paris Sorbonne, and the University of Birmingham. Between 2008 and 2010, he was a fellow in Literature, Art History, and Psychoanalysis at the ICI Kulturlabor Berlin, and he has held visiting positions at institutions such as the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, IULM Milan, and the School of Advanced Study, University of London, among others. His research focuses on Romantic and Gothic literature, the occult, and theories of spectrality. Among his publications are Italia lunare. Gli anni Sessanta e l’occulto (2018) and Spettri familiari. Letteratura e metapsichica nel secondo Novecento italiano (2024), as well as two co-edited anthologies on Italian folk horror.

Bart Van den Bossche is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. His research interests cover various topics in modern and contemporary Italian literature, with a focus on avant-garde and modernism, the relationships between myth and literature, and the poetics of the novel.

Since 2011, he has been a member of the MDRN research group (www.mdrn.be ) that studies European literature between 1880 and 1960. He has published essays on various authors and topics, a monograph on Cesare Pavese (Cesati, 2001) and a volume dedicated to myth in 20th-century Italian literature (Cesati, 2007). Some of the volumes he co-edited are Futurism. A Microhistory, eds Sascha Bru, Luca Somigli & Bart Van den Bossche (Legenda, 2017), 1947. Almanach littéraire, éds David Martens, Bart Van den Bossche & MDRN (Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2017), Modern Etruscans. Close encounters with a distant past, eds by Martina Piperno, Bart Van den Bossche & Chiara Zampieri (Leuven University Press, 2023) and Modernism and science in Europe 1890-1950, eds Anke Gilleir & Bart Van den Bossche, special issue of Journal of Literature and Science ((2023).