Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I dialogues with the
variety of texts recently published to commemorate the Great War. It
explores Italian socialist pacifism, the role of women during the
conflict and a dominant cultural movement, Futurism, whose leader,
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, glorified war and enlisted in the fight.
Other soldiers created documents about the war that differ from the
heroic and virile endeavor that Marinetti placed at the center of his
works on war. Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I pays
attention to the representations of the soldiers through an analysis of
their letters, dominated by descriptions of the terrible hunger they
suffered. In contrast, popular film absorbed the cultural lessons in
Marinetti's writings and represented soldiers as modernist heroes in
comedies and dramas. However, film did not shy away from representing
cowards who could only be baffoons and fools in propaganda films. In
another medium, the concern was to publish texts that would serve the
fighting soldier and inform readers about ideological and historical
motivations for the conflict. The publishing industry supported national
propaganda efforts. Only socialism could endanger anti-war publication,
but after its initial opposition to the conflict, socialists occupied a
neutral position. Italian socialism still remained the only European
socialist party that did not renege its pacifism in order to embrace
nationalism and the war, but it was also not in favor of actions that
would sabotage in the Italian war industry. ltalian socialism is only
one feature of Italian culture that was dramatically changed during the
war. WWI impacted every aspect of Italian and of European cultures. For
instance, as an essay in Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I
explores, the war industry needed workers. The solution was to bring
Chinese men France to contribute in the war effort. After the war, they
moved to other countries and in Milan, Italy, they founded one of the
oldest Chinatowns in Europe, dramatically changing the human landscape
of Italy as they later moved to other Italian cities. Italy and the
Cultural Politics of World War I supplies essential research articles to
the construction of an inclusive portrayal of WWI and Italian culture by
deepening our understanding of the transformative role it played in 20th
century Italy and Europe.
