Great War in Italy

This book collects interdisciplinary papers from international scholars who investigate the representation and interpretation of the First World War in Italy from the multi-faceted standpoints of literary criticism, history, cinema and cultural studies. The collected texts investigate a broad range of aspects of the Great War in the Italian context, from the ethical implications of testimony and literary rhetoric to the relationship between personal and public writing; from the role of intellectuals in the face of war to the political implications of identity, nationalism and irredentismo; from the function of propaganda and literacy among soldiers to the invention of a "spectacular" war through footage and movies.^ The introduction presents key-concepts such as conflict, individualism, brotherhood, responsibility, and propaganda within a framework of philosophical speculation on the idea of war as a constructive, and indeed necessary element of the relationship between individuals and of the process of identity-building, of which war represents an irrational degeneration. The volume is divided into four sections. The first focuses on language and propaganda, on the influence of th