Gadda Goes to War

When do we start going to war and why? And what did it mean to go to war from World War I to World War II and beyond, in Italy, before and after Mussolini, before and after, that is, that warring spirit of the age which keeps nations in fighting mode? This book explores these questions.

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This book introduces and analyses a stage performance of texts by Italian Modernist writer Carlo Emilio Gadda. When do we start going to war and why? And what did it mean to go to war from World War I to World War II and beyond, in Italy, before and after Mussolini, before and after, that is, that warring spirit of the age which keeps nations in fighting mode? Both time specific and universal, these questions are explored in this book through a unique combination of scholarly and theatrical performance based on the war diaries and a belated anti-Mussolini pamphlet by Italy's greatest Modernist writer Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973). These works were adapted for the stage by actor, playwright and director Fabrizio Gifuni in 2010, and are now presented for the first time in English, supplemented with facing Italian text, a dvd of the performance with English subtitles, and an engaging, thought-provoking scholarly guide to Italy's own Joyce purposely produced for the Anglophone audience by the Edinburgh Gadda Projects Team.
Key features: introduces Italy's greatest Modernist writer to the Anglophone audience in five sections: Poetics, Circulation, Translation, Staging and Resources; provides a flexible teaching and learning aid for work across subject areas; presents the first significant new English Gadda translation since the 1960s; and, includes the original Italian texts (with facing English translation) and the dvd of the Italian performance (with English subtitles).