Una guerra ancora nobile. Miti guerrieri nell’Italia dell’età posteroica (1945-61)

Autore: Marco Mondini
In: Storica. 53 • anno XVIII, 2012
doi:10.1400/203996
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Abstract

A still noble war. Warrior myths in Italy in the post-heroic age (1945-61)
A well-established historiographical paradigm presents WWII as a watershed in the history of war and warfare, and, more specifically, as a point of no return in the public perception and cultural representation of the war experience. Although it provides a fairly adequate description of the second half of the twentieth century, this paradigm cannot be accepted as it stands. Violence against civilians brutally escalated between 1939 and 1945, but it was by no means limited to the Second World War. Moreover, this change of paradigm was a generational phenomenon. Well into the 1950s and 1960s, writers, directors and artists were influenced by traditionalism of literary style and by a conscious or unconscious adherence to a canon of virility, defining masculinity in terms of courage, loyalty and devotion to the community (comrades and motherland). In recent years, the contribution of Italian intellectuals to the construction of an Italian war culture in the republican era has become the object of numerous studies. Scholars seem to have reached a general consensus on a few shared conclusions: the notion the older narrative paradigm of war was erased by the prostration of civil war and the necessity to distance oneself from the fascist regime, whose legacy was inseparable from martial rhetoric. According to this dominant paradigm, Italian literature after 1945 comes across as a constellation of testimonies of the downtrodden: defeated and humble people who were only waiting for the murderous storm of war to pass. However, the scholars who have worked to establish a canon of postwar Italian literature (and cinema) have avoided the complexity of post 1945 Italian intellectual field. The popularity of traditional war-novels and patriotic movies was huge: they were neither minor nor marginal. On the contrary, their influence and impact are obvious. This is one of the reasons why the generally accepted but certainly simplistic thesis of the «disappearance of heroes» (the idea that the sacrificial vision of death in battle was anachronistic and irretrievable) needs to be thoroughly reconsidered.

Parole chiave: Cultura; Narrazione; Seconda Guerra Mondiale; Italia
Keywords: Culture; Narrative; Second World War; Italy