Italian Literature, The “return to order”

The end of World War I saw a longing for the revival of tradition, summed up in the aims of the review La Ronda, founded in 1919 by the poet Vincenzo Cardarelli and others, which advocated a return to classical stylistic values. This led to an excessive cult of form in the narrow sense—as exemplified by the elegant but somewhat bloodless essays (elzeviri) published in Italian