Fascist censorship on literature and the case of Elio Vittorini

Abstract

SummaryThis article tackles the issue of literary censorship in Fascist Italy. The first part offers an outline of the organization and the practices with which the regime attempted to control publishers and authors. It tracks the development of Mussolini's Press Office into a fully fledged ministry, examines the introduction of a semi-preventive form of censorship, and looks at the effects of the anti-Semitic laws. The second part concentrates on the literary activities of the novelist, editor and translator, Elio Vittorini. His many encounters with Fascist censorship provide ideal subject matter for a close examination of how censorship affected literary production. It also provides an example of the need to re-address aspects of Italy's literary history during the Fascist period, particularly in relation to questions of coercive and consensual collaboration with the regime.