The Legacy of the Italian Resistance

This book adds to this growing body of scholarship on the Italian Resistance by analysing, for the first time, how the 'three wars' are represented over the broad spectrum of Resistance culture from 1945 to the present day. Furthermore, it makes this contribution to scholarship by bridging the gap between historical and cultural analysis. Whereas historians frequently use literary texts in their writings, they are often flawed by an insufficiently nuanced understanding of what a literary text is. Likewise, literary critics who have discussed writers such as Calvino and Vittorini, or films such Paisà and La notte di San Lorenzo, only refer in passing to the historical context in which these works were produced. By fusing historical and cultural analysis, author Philip Cooke makes a unique contribution to our understanding of a key period of Italian history and culture.

'Philip Cooke's highly original volume is a comprehensive analysis of the legacy of the Italian anti-fascist resistance...Cooke's study also delves deeply into the thorny area of politics. It covers an extraordinary amount of ground and the bibliography alone is a mammoth achievement. The book is...admirably clear and well organised. It can be read cover-to-cover or dipped into and it covered a very wide set of themes and questions but never in an obscure way...Cooke's important study shows why the resistance still matters.' - History Today

'The legacy of the Resistance runs like a seam beneath the surface of the entire history of postwar Italian politics and culture. Philip Cooke's book does a remarkable service to both scholarly and civic communities by drawing together a mass of information, events, artefacts, works, and 'vectors' in the public uses of this difficult history. He questions stereotypes, such as the Communist 'hegemony' over memory, brings together top-down and from-below methods and materials, and steers a lucid, forceful path through this most contested of territories. The book will become a necessary reference point for anyone thinking about the Resistance and about modern Italy.' - Robert S. C. Gordon, Reader in Modern Italian Culture, University of Cambridge, UK

'This book is a comprehensive analysis of the legacy of the Italian anti-fascist resistance. Its great strength lies in the fact that it covers the whole period from 1945 to the present day through the detailed study of a whole series of 'texts' - novels, films, documentaries, trials, newspapers, history books, diaries, monuments, paintings, museums and so on. This breadth of analysis makes this book both original and extremely useful for those studying and researching into post-war Italy, post-war Europe, and debates over memory.' - John Foot, Professor of Modern Italian History, University College London, UK

'Philip Cooke's book traces the complex history of the Resistance legacy from the end of the war to the present day. He offers his readers a detailed and refined analysis of a wide range of texts from works of history, to films, novels, short stories, monuments, political speeches, as well as fiction for children. This is a fascinating and lucidly written book which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the 'public use of history' in Italy.' - Paolo Pezzino, Professor, Department of History, University of Pisa

'Cooke builds on the most recent scholarship on the Resistance to provide a fascinating account of how its legacy has been contested in political, social, and cultural debates going back over half a century and coming up to the age of Berlusconi. The volume combines narrative readability with scholarly accuracy and insight, and is aimed as much at the political as the cultural historian. It constitutes the first systematic attempt in English to chart the overall significance of the Resistance legacy in Italy from the late 1940s to today.' - Martin McLaughlin, Professor, Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian, University of Oxford, UK

Philip Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Italian, University of Strathclyde, UK. His previous publications include The Italian Resistance: an anthology (1997); Fenoglio's binoculars, Johnny's eyes: history, language and narrative technique in Fenoglio's Il partigiano Johnny (2000); and Luglio 1960: Tambroni e la repressione fallita (2000).