Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy

by David D. Roberts

Overview

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Italy produced distinctive innovations in both the intellectual and political realms. On the one hand, Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) and Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) spearheaded a radical rethinking of historicism and philosophical idealism that significantly reoriented Italian culture. On the other hand, the period witnessed the first rumblings of fascism. Assuming opposite sides, Gentile became the semi-official philosopher of fascism while Croce argued for a renewed liberalism based on 'absolute' historicism.

In Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy, David D. Roberts uses the ideological conflict between Croce and Gentile as a basis for a wider discussion of the interplay between politics and ideas in Italy during the early-twentieth century. Roberts examines the connection between fascism and the modern Italian intellectual tradition, arguing that the relationship not only deepens our understanding of fascism and liberalism but also illuminates ongoing dangers and possibilities in the wider Western world. This set of twelve essays by one of the leading scholars in the field represents an authoritative view of the modern Italian intellectual tradition, its relationship with fascism, and its enduring implications for history, politics, and culture in Italy and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802094940
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/27/2007
Series:	Toronto Italian Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

David D. Roberts is Albert Berry Saye Professor of History at the University of Georgia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Historicism, Fascism, and the Wider Significance of the Modern Italian Experience     3
An Indirect Italian Angle on a Few Big Historical Questions     35
Franchini's Disillusionment: Rereading the Intervista su Croce from Abroad     54
The Revolt against Croce in Post-Second World War Italian Culture     68
Croce in America: Influence, Misunderstanding, and Neglect (with a supplement on the fortunes of Giovanni Gentile in the United States and Canada)     81
Historicism, Liberalism, Fascism: Rethinking the Croce-Gentile Schism     114
Maggi's Croce, Sasso's Gentile, and the Riddles of Twentieth-Century Italian Intellectual History     143
How Not to Think about Fascism and Ideology, Intellectual Antecedents and Historical Meaning     173
Croce, Crocean Historicism, and Contemporary History after Fascism     201
Crocean Historicism and Post-Totalitarian Thought     211
What Is Living and What Is Dead? Ginzburg's Microhistory, Croce's Historicism, and the Search for a Postmodern Historiography     221
The Stakes of Misreading: Hayden White, Carlo Ginzburg, and the Crocean Legacy     237
Postmodernism and History: An Unfinished Agenda     265
Notes     289
Index     361

Editorial Reviews

‘Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy sheds fresh light on the nature of Fascism as a revolutionary socio-political project and on the anomalies in how this pivotal episode in cultural and political history has been digested in, or regurgitated from, Italy’s collective memory. The result is a truly multifaceted book.’—Roger Griffin, European History Quarterly: vol 41:01:11

From the Publisher

‘Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy sheds fresh light on the nature of Fascism as a revolutionary socio-political project and on the anomalies in how this pivotal episode in cultural and political history has been digested in, or regurgitated from, Italy’s collective memory. The result is a truly multifaceted book.’

Roger Griffin