A History of Aristocracies: Old and New Avant-Gardisms in Poggioli and Marinetti

Abstract

This essay offers a close reading of Renato Poggioli’s classic The Theory of the Avant-Garde , tracing more specifically the influence of Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology on Poggioli’s analysis of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes. Poggioli developed an approach to literary and cultural history based on Pareto in earlier work. By reading his Theory in tandem with that earlier work, we suggest that Poggioli’s classic book points not so much to the innovative and innovating aspects of the avant-garde, as to the deeply conservative and ’aristocratic’ roots of avant-gardism. Turning to the early work and career of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, which were firmly rooted in the field of French literature, we explore certain inconsistencies and problems in Poggioli’s challenging Theory.