Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, the cultural production concerning this pivotal event of human history remains fertile ground for scholars of Italian Studies. The edited volume Resistance, Heroism, Loss contributes to the exploration of the Italian cultural memory of the Second World War by offering a wealth of case studies, addressing both canonical texts and less renowned authors, spanning from the postwar period to the early 2000s.
The introduction, by Cragin and Salsini, has the ambitious goal of providing a schema of the evolution of war representation in Italy up to today, identifying five phases in the Italian cultural memory that are then explored in the chapters of the book. Rather than a theoretical approach informed by Memory Studies, the authors choose to rely on historical scholarship – especially on Claudio Fogu's fine reconstruction of the Italian memory of the Second World War (Reference Fogu, Lebow, Kansteiner and Fogu2006) – developing an accurate survey of the dominant tendencies characterising the representation of the Second World War in Italian culture. The sections on the late 1940s and 1950s are particularly compelling. The former emphasises the effects that the war had on Italian national identity and pinpoints a series of themes, such as those of national Resistance, Italian suffering, and German evil, that long affected the Italian discourse on the Second World War. The latter reconstructs the conservative discourses that dominated Italian society in that decade, which has often been neglected in the scholarship. Given the topics that this introduction discusses, references to Focardi's Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano would have been particularly pertinent.
Chapter One, by Gabriella Orsi, examines Elsa Morante's short story Il soldato siciliano (1945) in the light of both Morante's biography and her theoretical ideas on the novel. The chapter reveals the intertextual relation that the short story establishes with Verga's Rosso Malpelo and convincingly argues that the text anticipates many themes of Morante's mature works, such as the use of Marian echoes, the presence of wandering figures endowed with a liminal otherworldly nature, and the condemnation of war as tragedy.
In Chapter Two, Gianluca Fantoni analyses the films on the Axis war released in the 1950s, showing that this filmic production puts forward a conservative patriotic interpretation of the war experience, which focused on acts of heroism and sacrifice by the Italian soldiers. These films, while overlooking the historical and political implication of Italy's participation in the Second World War as a Fascist nation, recast the country's postwar role in NATO by fostering conservative Christian values and anti-communist ideals. The chapter has the undeniable merit of offering close analyses of films that have been largely overlooked in English-language scholarship, facilitating a deeper understanding of the Italian culture of the 1950s.
In Chapter Three, Thomas Cragin compares Moravia's La ciociara (1957), translated in English as Two Women, with De Sica's filmic adaptation (1960). By identifying the character of Michele, the intellectual anti-fascist son of the family where Cesira and Rosetta found shelter, as the ethical centre of Moravia's novel, Cragin demonstrates that the different treatment of this figure in the film, together with the absence of the powerful references to Italian war crimes in the colonies, alter the sense of the story. While Moravia's work can be read as a statement against all wars, De Sica's film becomes a story about Italy's victimisation in the Second World War, which does not challenge the public memory negotiated in the postwar years.
Chapter Four, by Virginia Picchietti, examines Edith Bruck's short story Andremo in città (1962) and its filmic adaptation by Nelo Risi (1966), discussing the issue of the possibility of narrating the Holocaust, and bearing witness to it, through trauma theories and Levinas’ philosophy. Chapter Five, by Angela Boscolo Berto, applies notions of eco-criticism to the study of Resistance literature, showing that the mountain constitutes a crucial protagonist of Fenoglio's and Meneghello's novels, which perform a resemantisation of space and local geography to project the national ethos born out of the anti-fascist Resistance.
In Chapter Six, Barbara Zaczek carries out a detailed analysis of two novels of recent decades, Luce d'Eramo's Una strana fortuna (1997) and Bruno Morchio's Rossoamaro (2008). Constructed as thrilling enquiries into the past, respectively an exploration into the protagonist's family history and a detective investigation, the two novels thematise the tensions between history and memory, revealing the prolonged effects that the Second World War and the Italian civil war had on following generations of Italians. These novels, which tell unconventional stories revolving around complex figures of women partisans, can be seen as a sign of the more pluralist and inclusive tone that the Italian cultural memory of the Second World War acquired around the end of the twentieth century.
In Chapter Seven, Simonetta Milli Konewko discusses Laudomia Bonanni's Resistance novel La rappresaglia (2003) with the aid of theories of emotions. Focusing on the concept of ‘shame’, the chapter shows how the articulation of this emotion is used to call attention to the notion of individual responsibility and redefine both national identity and models of femininity. Given the sophisticated theoretical framework applied, it would have been interesting if the contribution had also surveyed the distinctions between shame and guilt, since many of the examples discussed seem to connect with both emotions.
The book closes with Rebecca Bauman's vibrant contribution, which surveys representations of masculinity across Italian war cinema, from Rossellini's Un pilota ritorna (1942) to Monicelli's Le rose del deserto (2006). Given the numerous issues addressed by the chapter, not all its analyses can be as excellent as those concerning Comenicini's Tutti a casa (1960) and De Santis’ Italiani brava gente (1964), which authoritatively identify the self-absolving strategies adopted by Italian culture to minimise Italy's responsibility in the Second World War.
Overall, Resistance, Heroism, Loss is a well-crafted and serious contribution to the study of Italian culture of the Second World War, which would also appeal to expert readers interested in the specific writers and film directors that are discussed. By bringing to the fore the reshaping of Italian identity in the postwar years, the conservative culture of the 1950s, and the question of Italian responsibility, the book addresses important issues that are likely to inform research on the Second World War in the Italian scholarship of the new decade.
