Desire for love, desire for knowledge, desire to possess, desire to desire and to be desired: our life is shaped by what we want and by our efforts to achieve it. Hailed by philosophers and psychoanalysts as the core of human identity, desire informs not only our actions, but also our dreams and hopes and their sublimation into art and literature. This collection of essays explores how desire is portrayed in modern and contemporary Italian literature, by analysing some of the most interesting literary figures of the last two centuries. The authors of this collection approach desire from various perspectives – psychoanalytical, sociological, political and semiotic – in order to show that desire, albeit at times not explicitly mentioned, pervades the literary works of modern and contemporary Italy, either as a central theme or as the secret motor of the narrative. Through the fil rouge of desire, the essays of this collection highlight the international dimension of Italian literature, establishing a connection between Italian authors and the major theoretical works of the last two centuries. As the notion of desire, as represented in literary texts, is informed by psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts that operate across the boundaries of nationality and language, modernists and scholars of Comparative Literature will find the papers in this book of considerable interest.