"The Genuine Family of My Extraordinary Youth". Male Bonding in the Italian Literature of the First World War

This chapter explores the representations of male bonding in the Italian Literature of the First World War. After introducing the notion of a “WWI Italian literary field” characterized by a distinctive generational and cultural homogeneity, this chapter focuses on two main narrative patterns: the war experience as a “liminal moment” and military life as a “discovery.” When these writers joined the “nation in arms, " they discovered a new dimension of life and a community in which they could grow and regenerate themselves through the canonical values of the warrior male ethos: courage, strength, loyalty, comradeship and spirit of sacrifice. This is the Italian version of a typical transnational notion of the war culture: the conflict as an opportunity for the emergence of a “generation of the fire.”