This study offers a new perspective on Italian nationalist culture before Fascism. Focusing especially on the extraordinary literary-political career of Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938), the book shows how literary critics and historians alike have failed to recognize links between the Italian writer and the protofascist -revolutionary right- or -conservative revolution- of France and Germany. Among the study's most significant topics are: the impact of D'Annunzian racial thinking and Orientalist writing in the evolution of Italian imperialism; conflicting responses of D'Annunzio and Thomas Mann to nationalist images of a regenerated Venice; and how Andre Gide refuses D'Annunzio's homoerotic nationalist cult."