Emotions and language are strongly associated. In recent years, many resources have been created to investigate this association and automatically detect emotions from texts. Presenting ELIta (Emotion Lexicon for Italian), this study provides a new language resource for the analysis and detection of emotions in Italian texts. It describes the process of lexicon creation, including lexicon selection and annotation methodologies, and compares the collected data with existing resources. By offering a non-aggregated lexicon, ELIta fills a crucial gap and is applicable to various research and practical applications. Furthermore, the work utilises the lexicon by analysing the relationships between emotions and gender.