Introducing the First
Comparative and Interpretive Study
of 20th-Century War Literature
A Comprehensive Overview Written Specifically
for
University Teachers, University Students and Secondary School Teachers
Umberto Rossi, Il secolo di fuoco: Introduzione alla letteratura di guerra del Novecento, published by Bulzoni, Rome (in the collection Quaderni di storia della critica e delle poetiche, edited by Prof. Armando Gnisci), ISBN 978-88-7870-320-9, 357 pages, euro 25.00.
Il secolo
di fuoco introduces the vast field of war
literature in a unique comparative and interpretive manner. In this
comprehensive study scholar Umberto Rossi not only examines war literature from
an interpretive stance, but he extends the analytic dimension and scope of 20th
Century war literature by utilizing a comparative approach from a
trans-national perspective.
For Rossi’s purposes, the war literature
discussed in Il secolo
di fuoco includes those
novels, stories, memoirs and autobiographies (but not poetry) written by
authors either directly or indirectly involved in the wars of the 20th Century.
The corpus of war literature analyzed includes texts that adopt conventional or
innovative narrative strategies and that belong to different genres and national
literatures. The authors discussed were involved in wars as combatants or as
civilians. Some relevant literary works written by authors who did not
personally experience are also included as they offer Rossi precious insights
into the overall war experience.
Il secolo
di fuoco is helpfully organized around an
Introduction in which Rossi’s theoretical approach is explained, followed by
five Chapters which explore the primary literature of the genre.
The Introduction outlines the constitution of
the primary literature, which began independently in France in the 1920s, in
Italy in 1970 and in the English-language countries in the mid-1960s. There are
many important scholars, such as Paul Fussell, Bergonzi,
Isnenghi, Leed, and Cobley
who focused on war literature, but they have usually worked on texts belonging
to their own national literature/language. These readings, however brilliant,
have generally been hampered by parochialism: general principles have been
extrapolated from a limited number of texts, and the lack of comparative,
trans-national approach has prevented scholars from understanding the overall
parameter of 20th century war literature.
Rossi’s inclusive approach also fills in the many gaps left by critical
efforts that are limited both in terms of nationality and specific timeframe.
For example, many monographs and articles have been written on the literature
of the Great War or the Vietnam War, but there are fewer critical contributions
about W.W. II or the Cold War, so important conflicts of the 20th century have
often been neglected.
Il secolo di fuoco presents readers with an overview
of the secondary bibliography, thereby offering readers a definition of a
general theoretical framework – generally, what is missing in the two most
interesting comparative analyses so far, A
Muse of Fire by A.D. Harvey and Romanzi di Finisterre by Alberto Casadei.
Helpfully, Rossi discusses the most relevant practical problems that any war
literature scholar/student will confront, and outlines his ideas in series of
sub-chapters devoted to the themes of this literature. For each issue the book
suggests critical tools and indicates key essays, monographs, articles, etc.
dealing with that question.
Following this Introduction, Rossi explores the primary literature in
five chapters.
The First chapter is a comparative reading of three classics of
19th-Century literature, namely Stendhal’s The
Charterhouse of Parma, Tolstoy’s War
and Peace and H.G. Wells’ The War of
the Worlds. The romantic approach to that war experience that dominated the
19th Century is analysed, focusing on Tolstoy’s representative narrative, on
Stendhal, who only deals with war in the first chapters of Charterhouse, and with Wells’s
science-fiction narrative that foreshadows some fundamental elements of
20th-Century war narratives. If the war literature of the 20th Century has its
specific features, they will be best understood when opposed to the way war had
been told in the narratives of the previous century.
The Second chapter deals with the vast literary production of the Great
War. This is the longest chapter of the essay because W.W.I literature has been
extensively and repeatedly mapped by several scholars, though these critical
efforts, with a few interesting exceptions, have been strictly national and/or
monolingual. The huge corpus is divided in three sections, according to the
three phases of W.W.I, privileging a trans-national and inter-textual
presentation of the novels/memoirs/stories. There are two sections that deal
with “eccentric” works that do not deal with combat experience, such as
narratives set behind the lines, or dealing with the experience of civilians,
and with the impact of W.W.I on some major authors of modernist literature,
such as Joyce, Svevo, Proust, Döblin, Céline, etc.
The Third chapter covers the years between W.W.I and W.W.II, focusing on
the Spanish Civil war and the colonial wars in Ethiopia and Morocco.
The Fourth chapter is devoted to W.W.II, and is divided into thematic
sections where this area of war literature is read according to a series of
promising research lines, presenting sets of texts where the key themes are
more manifest: such themes include the involvement of civilians, the ethical
question, the impact of technology, partisans’ warfare, the Shoah,
and the use of nuclear weapons.
The Fifth chapter explores war literature after 1945 along three main
axes, each discussed in one of the three sections of the chapter:
decolonization wars; the Cold war; media wars.
The book ends with a primary bibliography where texts are grouped
according to the war they deal with (which also includes works that have not
been discussed in the previous chapters), a secondary bibliography which lists
in two separate sections the fundamental book-length critical essays on war
literature and the rest of the secondary literature quoted in the book.