FascLit. Fascist Literature: Three Poetry Competitions in Fascist Italy
From September 1, 2024, the University for Foreigners of Siena will host the two-year research project FascLit, funded by the European mobility program for young researchers Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Post-doctoral Fellowship. The project manager, under the supervision of Anna Baldini, is Dr. Élise Varcin, who trained at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon.
FascLit investigates the relationship between literature and totalitarianism by focusing on three literary prizes which took place in the 1930s in Fascist Italy: “Poeti del tempo di Mussolini”, “Cervia” and “Viareggio”. While Mussolini never imposed predefined aesthetic criteria on art, he thought a new literature would rise spontaneously from living in a truly Fascist country. What is common to the three prizes analysed is that they were controlled, directly or indirectly, by Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Press and Propaganda from 1935 and from 1936 Minister of Foreign Affairs. Thus, they represent a prominent and concrete case study for exploring how Fascist politicians tried to shape Italian culture and how artistic and personal ambitions sought to contribute to the creation of the Fascist civilisation Mussolini called for.
The aim of FascLit is indeed twofold: to reconstruct the history and dynamics of the three prizes and the networks of intellectuals involved based on archival work; to analyse the prize-winning works by combining the traditional tools of literary analysis with the cutting-edge tools of digital textometry to understand what “Fascist literature” meant for the Fascists.
Thanks to a multi-disciplinary approach at the intersection of history, sociology of culture and literature, this project aims to systematically analyse the three prizes, bringing together the political and institutional aspects and the cultural and literary dimension.