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• Populism: A Controversial Historiographical Category

  80-94

  Marco Pignotti

  Views:

  306

  The note stems from the need to carry out a survey on recent international literature dedicated to populism, starting above all from the considerations contained in The Populist Temptation by Eichengreen, and in From Fascism to Populism in History by Finchelstein, as well as the results from the Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Rovira Kaltwasser, Taggart, Ochoa Espejo and Ostiguy. The contrasting reflections recorded around a phenomenon so debated allow to delineate the elements, that justify the introduction of a historiographical category in its own right and to project some definitions on the entire history of the Italian political system. The intention of this overview is to construct a catalog of the various interpretations of populism that have emerged in recent years. It is noteworthy that in the years following World War II until the present day, publications on populism have been produced in a discontinuous fashion, thus rendering the subject even more elusive and unclassifiable.

• Monicelli and the memory of the Great War

  125-139

  Giovanni De Leva

  Views:

  603

  In my essay, I examine Mario Monicelli’s La Grande Guerra, in order to verify if its comic and anti-heroic perspective really leads to a new concept of WWI. I first retrace the director’s previous filmography, where the characters, genres and patterns which will recur in La Grande Guerra originally take shape. I then reconstruct the movie’s genesis, focusing on the sources the screenwriters refer to: not only WWI movies and memories, such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Lussu’s Un anno sull’Altipiano, but also, quite unexpectedly, La vita militare by De Amicis.

  On this basis, I analyse the representation of the war, in its figurative and narrative elements. In many senses, it’s a war seen from the ground, and indeed the scenography and script take inspiration from the soldiers’ pictures of the front and their military songs. In this realistic context, Monicelli develops the plot of two cowardly privates, from a poor, undisciplined background, who ultimately identify with their nation enough to sacrifice themselves for their compatriots.

  The purpose of highlighting the unacknowledged war contribution of the mass, however, is somehow contradicted by the army’s image. The comic and anti-heroic aspects, indeed, concern only the low-ranked soldiers, while the Command is represented in a sentimental way. In this respect, Monicelli confirms a rhetoric coming from De Amicis, and later inherited by Fascism: the army as an image of a model society, where North and South, rich and poor, educated and illiterate unite, and where everyone deserves his hierarchical rank.

• «Odio finanche la lingua che si parla». Power and freedom in Vincenzo Consolo's Nottetempo, casa per casa

  85-95

  Giuseppe Traina

  Views:

  21

  The essay studies the relationships between the novel Nottetempo, casa per casa and the linguistic considerations disseminated by Consolo in other texts. Consolo does not limit himself to criticising the language of fascism but broadens his critical analysis to the language of power as such and the languages of opposition, when they are tainted by empty rhetoric. In this sense, the protagonist’s final escape also takes on a palingenetic value from a political point of view