Three Modalities of the Italian Memory of Fascism: Cronache di poveri amanti, La casa in collina, Tempo di uccidere, and the Issue of Responsibility

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This article examines the moral and political questions raised by Fascism through an analysis of three canonical postwar Italian novels: Vasco Pratolini’s Cronache di poveri amanti, Cesare Pavese’s La casa in collina, and Ennio Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere. By exploring the specific memory of Fascism that these texts create, the article shows that their different approaches to the past depend on distinct conceptualizations of responsibility, which are defined as “antagonistic,” “multiperspectival-but-restricted,” and “perpetrator-centered.” Pratolini’s novel condemns the regime and portrays ordinary Italians as resistant to the fascist regime. Pavese’s work offers a more nuanced, multiperspectival approach, yet limits its ethical reflection to the Italian Civil War, leaving other crucial aspects of fascist history unaddressed. In contrast, Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere foregrounds a memory centered on both individual guilt and collective responsibility for fascist and colonial crimes. The article argues that the modalities informing Pratolini’s and Pavese’s works are related to approaches to the fascist past that dominated Italian collective memory in the 1960s and early 2000s, while the mnemonic modality of Flaiano’s novel has been largely subordinate in Italian memory culture. Through this comparative literary analysis, the article challenges existing interpretations of these canonical works, and it underscores the role of postwar literature in shaping diverse memories of Fascism.