The two voices of the first Italian Canadian poet: Liborio Lattoni, fascist racial propaganda, and the legacy of Giacomo Leopardi

Abstract

Liborio Lattoni (1874–1958) settled in Montreal in 1908 and soon became a champion of Italian patriotic propaganda, both during the Great War and until 1940, when he and his son Mario were interned for being followers of Mussolini's regime. This pioneer of Italian Canadian literature, recreated, through the columns of a fascist periodical and a relentless poetic production spanning from the Thirties to the end of the Fifties, a transnational cultural identity which mixed contemporary politics, racial prejudice, and linguistic testimonies of ethnic belonging through the absorption of both elements of fascist propaganda and the linguistic and stylistic emulation of the fellow marchigiano poet Giacomo Leopardi. This study of Lattoni's poems published in the Italian Canadian ethnic press between the two wars highlights the ambiguous relationship between nationalist and transnational cultural practices and expands the understanding of the uses of literature in fascist propaganda, especially as a counterpoint of key historical events such as the military invasion of Ethiopia.