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THE CONCEPTS OF NATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM IN THE ITALIAN COMMEMORATIVE MONUMENTS OF FIRST WORLD WAR
Abstract
The construction of those commemorative monuments dedicated to the Fallen of the First World War began during the war itself, and was a way of coming to terms with the loss of loved ones, both as family members and comrades. However, with the advent of Fascism after the Great War, the idea which had formerly lain at the basis of memorial erection underwent a change. Prior to the rise of Fascism, commemorative monuments had focused on the concept of patriotism and commemorated either one specific individual or group. Plaques were simple and engravings neither pompous nor rhetorical. Statues represented human figures either individual soldiers or groups. During the Fascist era, memorials shifted focus, and the commemorative statues created in this period recalled Roman mythological characters. This shift from the Human to the Mythological was the embodiment of the belief that God and the Homeland were one single entity, a concept from which the nationalistic concept of The Cult of Heroes arose. The messages conveyed by those commemorative monuments created during the war and those erected in the post-war period, a period in which the concepts of both Pietas and sadness for a loved one were replaced by The Cult of Heroes and Divine Homeland, are totally different.
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