WAR AND EXPERIENCE: 20TH-CENTURY ITALIAN NARRATIVES

This seminar explores the ways in which the arts have been used to frame and understand the experience of war. Drawing on classic theories (e.g., Jameson, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Fussel, Leed), we will analyze how cultural and formal paradigms interact with lived historical events in memoirs, fictional narratives, poems, postcards, photographs, and films. Our discussion will concentrate on two themes, namely, the relation between experience and representation and the question of the medium: how do different genres and media affect the articulation of the war experience? Materials include: texts from D’Annunzio, Marinetti, Ungaretti, Saba, Lussu, Remarque (WWI), Flaiano, Fenoglio, Zangrandi, Rimanelli, Malaparte, and various documentaries (WWII).