Literary prizes are nothing if not controversial. Criticised for the selection -- or rejection -- of authors, texts and jury members, attacked for their economic impact on the cultural scene and for their influence within the publishing world, they paradoxically benefit from ever growing success, their number increasing exponentially every year. In this broad-ranging study, Clementina Osti looks beyond the polemical surface to explore the reasons for the extraordinary flourishing of literary competitions in twentieth-century Europe. Combining cognitive poetics with a wide range of critical approaches, she investigates the function of literary prizes as major intermediaries in psychological, cultural and social processes of identity construction. Embodying a utopian -- yearly repeated and ever deferred -- attempt at defining the self, literary competitions are revealed as key players on the cultural scene. Clementina Osti is a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She has completed a PhD in European Literature at the University of Cambridge and is currently working for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.