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<i>La Grande Italia:The Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century</i> (review)

2009; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 95; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cat.0.0562

1534-0708

Stanislao G. Pugliese,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Reviewed by: La Grande Italia:The Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century Stanislao G. Pugliese La Grande Italia: The Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century. By Emilio Gentile. Translated by Suzanne Dingee and Jennifer Pudney [George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History.](Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 406. $29.95. paperback. ISBN 978-0-299-22814-9.) Emilio Gentile, professor of contemporary history at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," is best known to scholars in America as an historian of fascism. His seminal work, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy(Cambridge, MA, 1996), forced scholars and students alike to re-examine and reinterpret Mussolini's regime. Here he turns to the "myth of the nation" in constructing, or rather deconstructing, Italy's history of the last century. The original Italian version was published in 1997 by Mondadori. The University of Wisconsin Press is to be commended for taking on the ambitious and most worthy project of this translation. With assistance from the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago, English readers can now examine and judge for themselves the fruits of the "myth of the nation" in Italy. Gentile employs a Sorelian definition of myth as "a constellation of beliefs, ideas, ideals and values combined and compacted into a symbolic image that arouses in the individual and the masses a strong conviction, enthusiasm, and the desire to act" (p. xiv). His definition of nationalism holds that it is "any cultural and political movement that aims to assert the supremacy of the nation as a historical, cultural, and political entity … identifying itself with the fatherland" (p. xiv). The book opens with the fiftieth anniversary of national unification in 1911, moving back into the nineteenth century and the Risorgimento and the founding of the so-called "Third Italy" (after the two previous Italies of the Caesars and the popes.) Gentile has rounded up an extraordinary cast of characters who are given a chance to expound on the myriad manifestations of the myth of the nation: from Cavour and Mazzini to the Calabrian Corrado Alvaro and the communist Antonio Gramsci. Liberals, socialists, fascists (of various stripes), communists, and Catholics are all here well represented. Whether the myth of the nation was as all-pervasive as argued here is open to debate. While the country was congratulating itself in 1911 for a half-century as a unified nation-state as it prepared for war with the Ottoman Empire over Libya, millions of poor peasants and artisans had migrated to all the corners of the earth. Declining living standards for millions—including not just hunger but actual starvation—and banditry leading to outright civil war were just two of the most powerful indictments against the failed promise of unification [End Page 849]and the new nation. In the Mezzogiorno (the impoverished South), the myth of America was a far more attractive myth than the myth of the nation. As Gentile demonstrates, the "myth of the nation" is inseparable from other myths: that of Rome, of history, of imperialism, of religion, of art, of prosperity. Some of the twenty black-and-white illustrations, taken from the Fry Collection of Italian History and Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library, are also available online at http://specialcollec-tions.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/ The book closes with a look at the festivities, if they could be called that, of the centenary of unification, in 1961.After passing through the crucibles of fascism, war (international and civil), the "economic boom," and consumerism, this was, according to Gentile, the "Jubilee of the Simulacrum," the "last performance" of the myth of the nation (p. 337). In a new preface to the book penned in October 2005, Gentile argues, "There is a reawakening of the cult of the nation in Italy today … there is a reawakening of the myth of the nation in Italy today" (p. vii). Gentile seems to assume that this is a good thing; whether or not it is, readers can now judge for themselves. Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press...