The Italian resistance and its narrative mythologization
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this dissertation I look at how the narrativization of historical events of national importance creates powerful mythical images -- mythologems (recurring images and narrative elements) — which persist in time while being reworked to reflect cultural progress in society. This narrativizing process functions as a political mythologization — "the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group make significance of their political experiences." (Bottici, 2007) I argue that narrative mythologizations do not just reflect the evolution of social consciousness, but also actively shape it by constantly re-defining the basic mythologems on which the founding myth is constructed. On April 25th, 1945, the Italian National Liberation Committee declared the uprising against Nazi occupation. This event is considered the final act of the Italian Resistance against Nazi-Fascism, supported by the Allies. The Resistenza became the founding political myth of the Italian republic, as its shared values (equality, solidarity, work) became the ground for the new constitution. In the following 75 years, events surrounding the Resistance and Liberation have generated a plethora of narrative accounts. Scholarship at the crossroads of Italian Studies, Literary Studies, and Film Studies has traditionally focused on the aesthetic innovations of Resistance narratives -- associating them with the emergence of literary and cinematic Neorealism in the aftermath of World War II. My project considers how the Resistance myth has generated different narrative legacies and core mythologems in literature and cinema, and how their development throughout the 20th century can be traced and interpreted in light of the social, political, and cultural evolution of Italy. In each chapter I trace the narrative evolution of the Resistance myth in a specific genre — each cultural product looks not only at the historical source, but also at its artistic predecessors as narrative models.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Biffanti, Daniele |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Wittman, Laura |
| Thesis advisor | Wittman, Laura |
| Thesis advisor | Alduy, Cécile |
| Thesis advisor | Harrison, Thomas |
| Thesis advisor | Prodan, Sarah Rolfe, 1978- |
| Degree committee member | Alduy, Cécile |
| Degree committee member | Harrison, Thomas |
| Degree committee member | Prodan, Sarah Rolfe, 1978- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of French & Italian |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Daniele Biffanti. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of French & Italian. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/dy968qw2213 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Daniele Biffanti
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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