Mattia Roveri

This article studies the representation of the military in Ennio Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere with a focus on the askari Johannes, a veteran of the Italian colonial army. It will be demonstrated that Johannes’ importance is not only related to his African origins or to the assumed family connection to Mariam, which has been the primary focus of scholarly attention thus far. Instead, it is profoundly rooted in the military experience that enables the old askari to become a point of reference for the Italian lieutenant and a constant means of self-evaluation throughout the novel. Furthermore, Johannes’ unique blend of military and African wisdom becomes central to the lieutenant’s psychological and cultural crisis, following the killing of Mariam. A close analysis of Johannes offers therefore a critical account of the cultural impact and representation of the black soldier in the most controversial and highly regarded literary work of Italian postcolonialism.

This article examines the theme of the military in the writings of Giovanni Verga in order to show its continued importance, and to shed new light on the cultural dimension of conscription and war in the literature of post-Unification and Liberal Italy. While Verga’s engagement with the military has not received much attention in scholarship thus far, or has been overshadowed by aspects of war itself, this study focuses on Verga’s portrayal of military experience to analyse his multi-layered literary development. This study brings out the author's ambivalent attitude towards progress at this time of complex transformations in Italy marked by ambitions to become a modern nation state.

This chapter explores the cinematic representations of black American soldiers in Italian postwar cinema. Through an examination of films and broader contemporary visual culture, the chapter analyzes the portrayal of American soldiers and officers of Italian and African heritage in the Italian cultural imaginary. They point out that as difficult and heated conversations around racial politics are taking place in the United States and despite the image of Italy as offering a respite from those prejudices experienced in America, the representations of Italian and African American military personnel, nevertheless, stage oppositional masculinities, which are in the service of constructing Italian national identity (in terms of race, language, ethnicity).

The first chapter provides an overview of the project that also aims to set the following contributions in a broader context. With the aim to launch a much-needed conversation on the role and reflections of the military in Italian culture, this chapter offers a thematically structured discussion, first, on the historical development of the institution, and secondly, on different approaches to the military. All these are used to prepare the stage for the particular insights and approach that set this volume apart from many other works on the military, in Italy and elsewhere. In particular, this chapter explores the ways in which paying closer attention to the role of the military in civilian artworks (literature, music, fine arts, fashion, etc.) may offer us better insights not only of the military structures and experiences but also of the meaning of the military institution for our lives, in war and peacetime.

In post-Unification Italy, one of the immediate aims of the newly established military institution was to homogenise the dispersed Italian society. For multiple reasons, Southern Italy was particularly targeted, making thus Sicilian literature of the late 19th century an especially rich source for understanding the changing imagery of soldiers.

This paper looks at the way soldiers are portrayed in the works of one of the most influential Sicilian writers of that period – Giovanni Verga. The topic of the military is frequently used by the author to draw attention to wider socio-political issues and in particular to criticise the idea of progress. A closer examination reveals how his work reflects (and perpetuates) the ambivalent imagery of soldiers: from the perspective of upper class, soldiers were overtly looked down upon; from the perspective of the lower class, soldiers became tantamount to the positive idea of the ‘new modern man’. These contrasting images were closely related to the fundamental characteristics of the Italian military, as the continuous class tension that came to characterise the formation of the military created a deep suspicion on behalf of higher class members towards young lower-class soldiers. Yet, innovative technologies that became associated with the military, e.g. photography, enabled soldiers to experience new ideas that made them stand out from the rest.

The unification of Italy and the subsequent colonial mission to Africa in the 1880s significantly shaped Italian geopolitics in the 19th century and beyond. Among other evidence, literary works of that period might provide us with valuable information about contemporary perceptions of these events, and in some curious instances they also shed light on the everyday economics of the new imperial Italy. An interesting example of the economic negotiations of new imperialist power comes from a short story by Giovanni Verga, ‘L’Africano’ (1911), in which the worth of the African land is questioned and compared to that of the motherland, Italy. What are the economic gains of the Italian colonial project, as understood by the people directly involved in it? Another instance is Gabriele D’Annunzio’s ‘Autobiografia di una sigaretta’ (1886), which explicitly describes the circulation of products that have been closely associated with imperial power (in this case the Ottoman Empire). The protagonist of Verga’s 'I Malavoglia' (1881) is involved with a group who had previously smuggled sugar and coffee (perhaps from Ethiopia?), and we know from historical records that this trade was crucial for Venetian ports, from where coffee was sent to the rest of Europe. This paper looks closer at the economic relations in the works of Verga and D’Annunzio by focusing on the details of imperial economics that might, in the end, provide us with some insights into the actual workings of an otherwise ‘invisible empire’.

The concept of transnationalism presupposes fixed boundaries that essentially lay bare the point at which nations begin and end. This model allows us to move beyond the nation and explore the influences of this (fixed/clear) culture: going far beyond its geography. The complex history of modern Italy has offered anything but a clear formulation of the Italian national and cultural identity. Italy, described ‘notoriously’ as a fragmented country, is riddled with national (unresolved) anxieties, such as the historical ‘Southern question’, which underlines the intricate internal relationship between North and South, but also reminds us of the cultural representation of transnational migration both outside and inside its borders.

This paper explores the relevance of the Southern question in relation to the broader concept of (a unitary Italian) identity and transnationalism through the works of Giovanni Verga. As a Sicilian writer in the North of Italy, Verga embodies the spectre of problems emerging from this confrontation and his work offers a fruitful platform for discussing the difficulties of both being and becoming Italian. Verga’s narrative is also a major indicator of the passionate interest for the South that arose among the higher classes during the last decades of 19th century Italy. This was a historical moment for the newly-born nation, which witnessed the dawn of some of the great imaginative ideas in modern Italian literature, while at the same time paving the way for the (catastrophic) era of the ‘civilizing mission’ to the Horn of Africa. Taking a cue from the influential book by Moe (2002), which focuses on the importance of the Southern question to understanding Verga’s work and its broader impact on national anxieties, this paper adds a postcolonial twist to the whole debate, in order to show not only that canonical texts ‘make’ the South, but also that the South ‘speaks back’ by producing special claims for the Italian and European (transnational) imagination.

This paper explores some important elements of Flaiano's novel that scholars have regarded as having particular association with colonialism. More specifically, these topics are almost exclusively related to the idea of the "colonial body", encompassing both the body of the coloniser and of the colonised. Taking a step further, I will discuss two different literary pieces by the 19th century authors Gabriele D'Annunzio and Giovanni Verga in an attempt to understand whether some elements can be teased out from their works that have strong similarity with the characteristics outlined in Flaiano's 'Tempo di uccidere' (1947).