The Fascist Character as Enigma in Post-World War II Italian Literature, Cinema, and Historiography

The Fascist Character as Enigma offers a new reading of Italy’s ‘divided memory’ of fascism by way of an unconventional point of view: that of the villain. The narrative shape of antagonists, spies, traitors, and collaborationists has often been overlooked as either caricature or stereotype. However, in many cases such ‘freaks’ constitute the most entertaining figures of a plot, bringing to the story its twists, mysteries, and unexpected turns of events. Why are evil and vice so fascinating? Why, despite their negative roles in history and society, are characters such as the fascist or the Nazi, still powerful in triggering our imagination and most forbidden desires? Sadism, sexual perversion, and ambiguity, physical deformation—to name a few—form the common traits of villains in works that deal with the difficult, traumatic memory of fascism, tracing a genealogy of evil and darkness which will guide us from Calvino and Moravia to Bertolucci, Rossellini, and Fenoglio. Thanks to a unique comparative and multidisciplinary crosscutting approach, Riccardo Antonangeli’s study provides insightful narratological readings of films, novels, short stories, memoirs, and historical reconstructions which tried to frame, portray, make sense of a blurred and unequivocable past.