‘Un bruttissimo affare’: Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli’s Literary Inquiry into the Biennio 1943–1945

Abstract

In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli’s Tango e gli altri. Romanzo di una raffica anzi tre (2008) calls into question a popular narrative that converts the Resistenza, a heterogeneous revolutionary and anti-fascist movement, into a symbol of nationalist propaganda. Because he is at once a carabiniere, a partigiano, and a meridionale, the novel’s hero, Santovito, who is charged with reopening a case adjudicated by a partisan tribunal, poses an ontological challenge to the mythology of the Resistance. Nevertheless, it is precisely this hybridity that enables Santovito to understand that confronting the tarnished legacy of the Resistance preserves the integrity of the movement by restoring to collective memory the tangle of personal conflicts and interests that intersected with Italy’s unprecedented civil strife.