This introductory chapter outlines the book’s central argument: the overlooked yet pivotal relationship between Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Italian Renaissance. While thinkers such as Delio Cantimori and Antonio Gramsci recognized this connection, scholarship has yet to provide a sustained account of how Renaissance history and myth shaped D’Annunzio’s ethnonationalism. This absence reflects enduring interpretive biases that reduce D’Annunzio to a decadent aesthete, neglecting his serious engagement with the intellectual and cultural currents of his time. By reassessing D’Annunzio’s writings in their historical context, this study aims to reposition him as a key figure in Italian and European modernity, whose reimagining of the Renaissance offered a paradigm for modernist and national renewal. The chapter also situates the book’s approach within broader discussions of nineteenth-century appropriations of the Renaissance, the cultural politics of modernism, and the role of literature in shaping national identity, offering a new interpretive framework for understanding D’Annunzio’s enduring significance.