La realtà dell’Italia post-unitaria nelle opere di Alfredo Oriani. L’analisi storicoletteraria del caso della ricezione di un autore preteso dal regime politico
The reality of post-unitary Italy in the Alfredo Oriani’s oeuvre. An analysis of the case of an author appropriated by a political regime

Author(s): Katarzyna Kowalik
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Italian literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Alfredo Oriani; fascism; post-unitary Italy; Italian novel; reception of literary works
Summary/Abstract: The monograph “La realtà dell’Italia post-unitaria nelle opere di Alfredo Oriani. L’analisi storicoletteraria del caso della ricezione di un autore preteso dal regime politico” raises the topic of a unique phenomenon in the history of Italian literature, so far rarely described in Italian studies, which was the evolving reception of the work of the writer, journalist and historian Alfredo Oriani (Faenza, 1852 – Casola Valsenio, 1909). Nowadays, little known even among Italian readers and not often mentioned in literature textbooks, ignored by literary critics during his life, forced to publish further texts for his own financial resources and in a few reviews described as an obscene artist and scribbler, in the interwar period he was surrounded by the cult of a fascist ideology’s precursor and, thanks to the personal commitment of Benito Mussolini, raised to the rank of one of the greatest writers in the history of Italy.In the thesis were discussed two motifs. First of them is an analysis of five novels of Oriani in terms of the image of Italian reality after 1861 presented in them. The second issue considered in the work is the writer’s extraordinary literary case, whose reception, changing over the decades, was strongly related to the appropriation of his oeuvre by the fascist regime seeking intellectual grounds of its ideological-political activity. The methodological assumptions of the dissertation are based on the reflection on the author’s position in the reception of a literary work and the issue of intentionality in its interpretation.

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