The Library
Mussolini between hero worship and demystification : exemplary anecdotes, petite histoire, and the problem of humanization
Tools
Gundle, Stephen (2022) Mussolini between hero worship and demystification : exemplary anecdotes, petite histoire, and the problem of humanization. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64 (1). pp. 122-149. doi:10.1017/S0010417521000414 ISSN 0010-4175.
|
PDF
WRAP-Mussolini-hero-worship-demystification-anecdotes-span-italic-histoire-humanization-2022.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (246Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0010417521000414
Abstract
Mussolini is considered in this article as a figure around whom narratives have been developed for a century or more. Several biographies were published shortly after he came to power and many others have appeared in the decades since his death in 1945. This article explores the place of anecdotes in the construction of a legendary Mussolini in the 1920s and in the demystification that marked the period after World War Two. It is shown that early biographies were marked not only by hero worship but also by a commercially driven need to humanize and to amuse. After the war, humanization persisted as former Fascists and associates of Mussolini spread stories and anecdotes that made the dictator appear not as an evil tyrant but as a flawed and fallible human being. The agenda here was to make support for Fascism and its leader forgivable. A comparison of the anecdotes shows that both adulatory and demystificatory ones reserved a place for minor stories or petite histoire. The resulting image, which placed some emphasis on his sex life, proved influential. It presented a challenge to historians and found its way into the biographical films that were made for cinema and television between the 1970 and the 2000s. It is suggested that, via anecdotes, Mussolini occupied an ambiguous and continuous place in the moral universe of Italians, functioning variously as a political and a gender exemplar.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Comparative Studies in Society and History | ||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 0010-4175 | ||||
Official Date: | 3 January 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Volume: | 64 | ||||
Number: | 1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 122-149 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0010417521000414 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Copyright Holders: | © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History | ||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 January 2022 | ||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 January 2022 |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year