Abstract
In the post-war period, Italian culture went through a crisis, which provoked thorough debates about the question of national identity. The article outlines the reasons for this crisis and examines some prominent attempts to redefine italianita through literary writing, focusing especially on novels that seek to describe Italy as seen through the eyes of foreign narrator-protagonists. Through discussion of the works and ideas of Guido Morselli, Ennio Flaiano, Antonio Tabucchi and Primo Levi, the article illustrates the aims behind this specific literary strategy as well as referring to its inevitable limits. Finally, it describes the emergence of an anti-essentialist understanding of national identity, which questions not so much specific connotations of italianita as the concept of a stable national identity itself. © 2002 Forum for Modern Language Studies.
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