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Enrico Sturani
ITALIA! SVEGLIA!
UNO STIVALE DI CARTOLINE
tutti i simboli della nostra Patria

156 pp. - 232 colour ill. - format cm 24x21 - softbound - ed. 2011
series "History through documents"
Italian text

ALSO AS FREE BOOK (class B)

ISBN: 978-88-96381-08-3
ITALY! WAKE UP!
A "BOOT" FULL OF POSTCARDS
all the symbols of our Homeland

PREFACE by Maurizio Pagliano

In a roundup of 232 pieces, from end-nineteenth century to present days, postcards reveal themselves as spy of Italian people collective imagination. An imagination that drove them to nationalistic fanaticisms, but sometimes to critical and not without irony visions too.

Like any other State, Italy is symbolized by its own flag but its three colours are enough too. A Monarchy until 1946, Italy was symbolized by the King and, perhaps, even just by some of the House of Savoy's attributes. Sole Country with an immediately recognizable shape, Italy coincides with it but the "boot" is often represented upside down. The Mother Country, like any allegoric device of academic matrix, shows Herself in ancient clothes that, depending on the circumstances, match Her austere image with others of mythological matrix, gathered from the Roman world or associated to the Founding Fathers of Risorgimento. It was during interventionism that Italy took young, attractive and even audacious likeness and motions. During the twenty years of Fascism, Italy coincided with the symbol of lictor's fasces and this was often replaced by the Duce's image.

In conclusion, Italy is so varied that suspect has arisen that its symbolic value is uncertain. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Mother Country was mocked, in recent years, together with all the other symbologies swinging between rhetoric and kitsch.

CONTENTS

* Preface by Maurizio Pagliano
* I - Too many allegories and not so clear
* II - Splendour and decline of patriotic symbols
* Homeland colours
* Homeland forms
* The allegoric figure of the Mother Country
* Libyan war. An outburst of symbols
* Joyful symbols of interventionism
* The Great War
* Origins and growth of fascist symbols
* Patriotic symbols of the Republic
* Essential bibliography
LARGE SILVER - IPHLA 2012
Mainz, 2-4 novembre 2012

DIPLOMA - ALPENADRIA EPPAN 2013 (ALPEADRIA) - Eppan/Appiano (BZ)
21-23 giugno 2013

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