A Century of Italian War Narratives

Voices from the Sidelines
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-54110-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 220 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 515 g

This volume focuses on acts of courage, defiance, and sacrifice undertaken during World War I and II by individuals that mainstream history has relegated to the sidelines. Drawn from different genres – literary, cinematic, diaristic and historical – the experiences that these ‘outsiders’ confronted lay bare the intimate, if lacerating, choices that they faced in their struggle for freedom. Ignored by official history, the testimonials that war prisoners, female partisan leaders, spies, deserters, and disillusioned soldiers offer, provide a fresh insight into the social, political, historical, and ethical contradictions that define warfare rhetoric in the twentieth century. The book’s ten contributors delve into the conflicts between oppressive authorities and the desire for freedom. With verve and energy, they revive these largely neglected voices and turn them into a provocative medium to discuss, and redefine, issues still relevant today: heroism, pacifism, national pride, gender issues, faith, personal and collective history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Gussago, Luigi

Palma, Pina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Italienische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Voices from the Sidelines

1 Tabucchi and the Antihero: Figures for a Historical, Existential and Symbolic Resistance

Veronica Frigeni

2 The Foibe War Narrative: The New Antiheroes of the ‘Second Republic’

Louise Zamparutti

3 Margherita Marchione as Antihero for Italian Jews: A Complex Message of Hope

Lisa Vitale

4 Unfit for War: Stories of Desertion in Italian Fiction; Dessì and Pellegrini

Luigi Gussago

5 “Non credo più alla Patria, all’eroismo, alle Sante Cause …”: The Journal of Donato Guglielmi, pow in Russia during ww2

Gianluca Cinelli

6 Partisan Diary: Ada’s Wars

Pina Palma

7 Notturno and the War: D’Annunzio’s Intimate Reflection on Heroism

Michela Barisonzi

8 Everyday Heroes: Italian Identity, Moral Dilemmas, and Nonviolence in a Late Antifascist Resistance Novel by Antonio Barolini

Andrea Sartori

9 An Antihero in Command: Soffici under the Orders of Captain Punzi

Enrico Riccardo Orlando

10 Between Epic and Anti-Epic: Observations on Italian Literature of the Great War

Tancredi Artico

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Luigi Gussago is associate research fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. His research interests range from semiotics to translation theory and practice, ecocriticism, and comparative literature. He has published the volume Picaresque Fiction Today ( Brill Rodopi), 2016).

Pina Palma teaches at Southern Connecticut State University. Her research focuses on medieval and renaissance literature, as well as on modern and contemporary female writers. She authored Savoring Power, Consuming the Times. The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature (Notre Dame UP, 2013).