The idea of epic and New Italian Epic

Abstract

This article attempts to describe some characteristics of New Italian Epic (NIE), especially in relation to the epic mode itself. It aims to liberate the term ‘epic’ from the perception inherited from twentieth-century literary theory, and to reassess it as a component of NIE. The article shows how NIE interprets ‘epic’ as a way of rereading history critically by engendering new myths (mythopoesis), and how it conveys a desire for stories that encompass a search for historical truth. NIE is described as a corpus of new metahistorical romances for the contemporary moment, a tool that enables readers to take an active part in the construction of meaning within a society that seems to have progressively forgotten how to interpret data, to the detriment of historical truth. This is achieved through the recalling of events in the form of allegorical narratives, which, while they do not recount Italian historical facts as such, evoke real events by referring to what has been left unsaid in Italian history. This...