Forging the New man: World War I Narratives for Children
by Marisa Giorgi
This article examines the role of children’s literature as a tool in Mussolini’s anthropological revolution. A discussion of the regime’s goals to fascistize children’s leisure-time literature and the conciliation between the state and the Catholic Church provides context for an analysis of the conversion scenes from Eros Belloni’s Guerra! Romanzo fascista per i giovani (1933) and Antonio Beltramelli’s La grande diana (1934). The novels chronicle the participation of young boys whose participation in World War I transforms them into “new men.” This essay aims to illuminate the centrality of children’s literature to the regime’s agenda of forming the “new Italian.”