Du roman à la propagande. La Grande Guerre dans la littérature de jeunesse italienne de l’entre-deux-guerres

The way in which World War I was told to Italian childhood in the post-war period has developed in a close connection to the historical context. In the first years after the end of the war, this perception was closely related to the mourning and to the sufferings lived by the people. The best novel of this period, La zingarella e la principessina (1920) by Olga Visentini, adopts a feminine point of view and stands out against all other war novels of the same time. After the rise of fascism (1922), the memories of World War I are transformed into a praise of the conflict: patriotic love and soldiers’ heroic sacrifices are glorified, even if the fights are often inserted in fictional plots that remove any tragic dimension. Salvator Gotta’s Piccolo Alpino (1926) is probably the best example of this strategy: a children’s book in which a ten-years old boy participates to the war, Piccolo Alpino presents to the reader a nationalist version of an adventure novel, whose plot is nevertheless well developed