ITALIAN BOOKSHELF Edited by Dino S. Cervigni and Anne Tordi As of the 2008 issue, book reviews are published exclusively online. Please visit the journal’s website for the complete text: www.ibiblio.org/annali GENERAL & MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES Joshua Arthurs. Excavating Modernity. The Roman Past in Fascist Italy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. Pp. 216. During the interwar period, Europeans evinced a common interest towards antiquity. The revival, christened classicism, manifested itself in arts, literature, architecture, and in a growing interest in the study of antiquity. Classicism served many purposes: on the one hand, the totalitarian regimes found its monumentality useful in architecture to convey the state’s authority. On the other hand, in a Europe that was painfully recovering from the disasters of the First World War, classicism represented a “return to order,” a conservative reaction after the avant-garde experiments of the prewar period, the continuity of the Western cultural heritage, and stability in the midst of the crisis provoked by modernity. Joshua Arthurs’s book concerns the cult of ancient Rome, — romanità — in Fascist Italy during the entire twenty-year period that Mussolini was in power. The introductory chapter deals with the idea of Rome from the second half of the 19th century until Mussolini’s seizure of power, and with Italy’s cultural life in the early twentieth century. Successively, Arthurs concentrates on four important topics, namely, the Institute of Roman Studies, the urban planning of Rome, the Emperor Augustus exhibition, and the question of race, to each of which he dedicates a chronologically organized chapter. As Arthurs writes, the notion of romanità was particularly useful in Italy among the many ideological, political, and artistic trends that found inspiration from ancient Rome, The Roman Catholic Church could justify its mission with the ancient empire’s ecumenical nature. Pride in the continuation of the Roman tradition and the idea of Italian “cultural and moral superiority” also played a significant role during the Risorgimento in the creation of a national identity. The cult of Rome experienced a sharp rise in the young nation-state of the late 1800s, and romanità was most especially important for those who dreamed of a strong, united, and imperialistic Italy. Enrico Corradini (1865-1931), the theorist of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), together with the conservative bourgeoisie, brought the cult of Rome into Fascism and Italian daily life as soon as Mussolini became prime minister. The Institute of Roman Studies (Istituto di Studi Romani), founded in 1925 and still today in existence, is the subject of the second chapter. As a sign of Mussolini’s complex cultural policy, the Institute was never recognized as the regime’s official organ. Nevertheless, as Arthurs 564 Annali d’italianistica. Volume 31 (2013). Italian Bookshelf shows, through various congresses, exhibitions, and publications, it contributed massively to both the formation and promulgation of the cult of Rome. Chapter three is dedicated to a discussion of urban planning in the city of Rome. As Arthurs explains, on the one hand, in order to modernize the capital, the regime both continued the pre-existing urban plans and started new ones; on the other, the restoration and “liberation” of the Roman monuments from the surrounding buildings aimed at bringing antiquity in closer contact with the present time. In the fourth chapter Arthurs deals with the Emperor Augustus exhibition organized in 1937-38 to commemorate the 2000th anniversary of the emperor’s birth. The huge exhibition was hosted in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, and it was considered “the apogee of romanità” (125). As “a total reconstruction of every aspect of the ancient world” (106), it had a manifold task to educate the Italians, to promote the regime abroad, and to attract an international audience to Rome. In addition to the detailed and careful description of the history of the exhibition and of the exhibition itself, Arthurs also sheds light on the mostly positive reception that it received from both the foreign press and the international scholarly community. Romanità was an important element in Fascism from the very beginning. However, it was only around the mid-1930s that it fully gained ideological supremacy. After the proclamation of the Fascist Empire, ancient Rome became a huge reservoir with which political initiatives of any kind could be justified. The last chapter of Arthurs’s book is a survey of the idea of race that came to the fore in 1938. Again, ancient Rome served as a model, when the promoters of the racial laws argued that the main cause of the fall of the Roman Empire was actually the demographic and moral deterioration of the native race (139). Even though by the end of the 1930s the cult of Rome was concretely and massively present, Fascist Italy was not supposed to be a reconstruction of ancient Rome. Instead of a nostalgic return to the remote past, the regime used romanità in order to create the aspiration toward a glorious future and a solid, imperialistic national identity. This is also Arthurs’s main thesis, as the title of the book clearly indicates. In the conclusion Arthurs offers a survey of the Roman cult after Fascism. Mussolini’s collapse marked the end of the Fascist interpretation of the cult of romanità. In the post-Second World War period, Italy restored the idea of Rome as the cradle of Christianity, Roma sacra. The main task of classical studies was no more to find a model or a premonition for the future, nor to celebrate the past. Now antiquity was re-examined from the Christian point of view, “to emphasize the providential function of the empire,” as Arthurs writes (152). Arthurs’s book is based on a variety of primary sources, including journals, and newspapers; thus, it seems to be quite promising. However, Arthurs adds relatively little to what is already known about the topic of romanità. The research could have benefited from a systematic study of Fascist decision-making or of the reception 565 Annali d’italianistica. Volume 31 (2013). Italian Bookshelf of the main events of romanità in the foreign and Italian press. Likewise, it would have been useful to place Fascist romanità in the European context. Nevertheless, Arthurs’s book is a good and carefully written overview of the cult of Rome. As such, it is an important contribution, especially for the English- speaking world. Marja Härmänmaa, University of Helsinki Ann Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns, eds. The Printed Media in Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers. London: Legenda, 2011. Pp. 208. The Printed Media in Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers and Readers, the latest addition to the highly popular series Italian Perspectives by Legenda, the Modern Humanities Research Association, and Maney publishing companies, explores the major components of print media in Italy from the time of unification until WWI. By way of thirteen essays that are divided into four subheadings, this anthology sheds light on the process of cultural production in Italy as social and economic transformations affected print media. The editors present a volume that places the reader in the ongoing debates on modernism by way of these media, an innovative approach that furthermore shows the industry’s complexity and its influence on society. After a brief introduction, the first section entitled “Reading Publics” begins with John Davis’s essay “Media, Markets and Modernity: The Italian Case, 1870-1915,” which challenges the notion that Italy lacked a developed print industry. Relying on a variety of statistical information on readership and publishing, Davis argues that Italy’s print industry was not all underdeveloped but rather fragmented. He demonstrates that the progression of the print industry coincided with the creation of the new liberal State and the waning influence of the Church, and concludes that these institutions turned to print media to legitimize and disseminate their programs. Chapter two rounds out the section with an essay penned by Maria Grazia Lolla, “Reader/Power: The Politics and Poetics of Reading in Post-Unification Italy.” Lolla underscores the changing view of reading as it became a powerful tool in shaping the individual and nation. She argues that the development of best-sellers and popular literature encouraged writers to acknowledge the reader’s taste especially if writers wanted to earn a living. This kind of capitulation sparked fear about the decline of literature, but Lolla points to Verga’s experimental literature as an example in which literature challenged and elevated the reader. What emerges from Lolla’s analysis is that fin-de-siècle Italy confronted the position of art in society as well as the position of the reader relative to the writer. “Cultural Productions” represents the second section of the anthology and starts with Joseph Luzzi’s essay, “Verga Economicus: Language, Money, and 566 Annali d’italianistica. Volume 31 (2013). Italian Bookshelf Identity in I Malavoglia and Mastro-don Gesualdo,” which establishes a correlation between questione della lira and questione della lingua. As Italy sought to standardize its currency with the lira, it had to reach beyond the monetary aspects and target the cultural meanings that were behind the various currencies. Luzzi draws on the characters in Verga’s novels to highlight the disconnect between the new vocabulary of business transactions and the traditional ways of understanding business which were engrained in the regional dialect and local currency. In chapter four, Olivia Santovetti’s essay, “The Cliché of the Romantic Female Reader and the Paradox of Novelistic Illusion: Federico De Roberto’s L’illusione (1891),” readdresses the power of reading. Santovetti examines the protagonist Teresa in L’illusione, who is created in the image of Flaubert’s Emma Bovary.