The Commitment to Truth in the Early Resistance Short Fiction of Beppe Fenoglio

This essay considers the Resistance short stories in Beppe Fenoglio’s collection I ventitre giorni della città di Alba, published in 1952. Setting these stories within the historical and culture context of post-war Italy, it investigates their author’s commitment to expressing the “truth” of the experience of the Resistance through fiction. It argues that Fenoglio goes further than his neorealist contemporaries in attempting to do so in the manner in which he depicts a civil war rather than a war of liberation, and in his unsparingly harsh description of certain aspects of partisan behavior. The essay examines the relationship between Fenoglio’s life and his fiction, putting the case that we should draw clear distinctions between the two, without detracting from the truth of the latter. In conclusion, it draws comparsions between the early stories and Fenoglio’s later novel, Il partigiano Johnny, where the author was able to capture the heroic qualties of the Resistance alongside his depiction of all its contradictory aspects.

Citation

Seed, I. (2017). The Commitment to Truth in the Early Resistance Short Fiction of Beppe Fenoglio. Italica, 94(2), 243-58

Publisher

Italica

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10034/620634

Type

Article

Language

en

ISSN

0021-3020