Modernity, Latinità and the Nation in Italian Modernist Magazines (1914-1922)

Abstract

This article explores the intersection between Latinity, modernity and nationalism in Italian magazines between 1914 and 1922. It argues that these notions, which had been at the center of cultural debates since the post-Risorgimento years and were re-elaborated during the First Word War and in the immediate postwar period, challenge and complicate the common assumption that reformulations of Latinity and classicism should be interpreted primarily as a return to tradition, which sanctioned a separation of the spheres of art and politics that had been conflated by the pre-war avant-garde movements. This study contends that the intersection between classicism, modernity and nationalism in Italian modernist magazines resulted in a rethinking of the notion of Latinity. This rethinking, both artistic and political, encompassed reformulated ideas of Mediterranean Europe and a repositioning of Italy within it. In this sense, the politicization of classicism embedded art in the historical identity of the nation and was instrumental in the formation of the ideological basis of the relationship between art and the fascist regime.