Walter L. Adamson is the SC Dobbs Professor in the Department of History at Emory College of Arts and Sciences (Department of History). He received his PhD from Brandeis University and his area of interest is modern European intellectual and cultural history, particularly focused on modern Italian history; this background gives him authority to write on this topic. Adamson’s thesis is that the voiciani’s modernism was a source of influence for the fascist movement, and Mussolini took much of his cultural politics from them. Additionally, he argues that Mussolini’s politics might be “characterized… as the politicization of Italian modernism” (360). In order to support this claim, Adamson first gives his own provisional definition of “modernism” …show more content…
He then begins to illustrate modernism’s connection to fascism by showing how modernism legitimized fascism and gave Mussolini ideas about the importance of restoring the cultural authority of myths. After this, Adamson gives a broad analysis on the sources of fascist rhetoric and the “secular-religious aura it sought to project” (363). He describes straightforward sources, like the “culture of the trenches” (363) and D’Annunzio, but then he describes some of the lesser well known sources such as Croce, Gobetti, Gentile, and other modernist literature and authors and their unique modernist viewpoints. After this, Adamson gives another general background about the socioeconomic and political situation of Italy at the time of the emergence of modernism and how a variety of Italians, some previously mentioned and some new, helped create an avant-garde cultural movement founded in modernism. Adamson then moves on to demonstrate why the Florentine avant-garde was “modernist,” citing their generational quality, experimental nature, and mission to create a new political condition of a spiritual sort as evidence. After demonstrating this, Adamson moves to a specific example of Prezzolini and La Voce, an Italian literary magazine. He