This thesis has examined the course of foreign policy of Fascist Italy from the beginning of the Second World War, September 1, 1939, to Italy's formal entry into that war, June 10, 1940. This policy was virtually the will of Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator. Most deeply explored were Italy's relationships with Great Britain, France, and Germany. Explored to a lesser degree were Italy's relationships with the United States and the Soviet Union.This thesis sought to answer two basic questions: Why did Italy not go to war in September, 1939, as she was bound by treaty to do?, and, what finally prompted Italy to go to war, on Germany's side, when she did the following June? Accordingly, the various possible factors, political, diplomatic, economic and military, that brought pressure upon Mussolini to act as he did were also examined. These factors originated both from within Italy and without.

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Lo scrittore ed illustratore Antonio Rubino (1880-1964) fu artista di rilievo nel panorama letterario infantile del Novecento, prolifico nell’ideare opere connotate da forte ironia e da soluzioni espressive multimediali. La ricerca dà risalto a quanto pubblicato dall’artista sanremasco sulle pagine dei periodici per ragazzi nella prima metà del XX secolo, settore ad oggi privo di uno studio sistematico. Si tratta di un punto di vista favorevole a far emergere i contenuti trasmessi dall’autore al destinatario infantile, nonché a fare luce sul controverso rapporto con il fascismo e a tratteggiare l’evoluzione multimediale della sua produzione per l’infanzia. La definizione di una poetica rubiniana, che colga le matrici artistiche e le peculiarità ironiche della sua arte, conduce ad una riflessione educativa che interroghi la responsabilità assunta da Rubino nei confronti dell’infanzia lettrice. / The writer and illustrator Antonio Rubino (1880-1964) was a significant artist in the children’s literary panorama of the twentieth century. His works are connoted by strong irony and multimedia expressive solutions. This research is focused on Rubino’s works edited on children’s periodicals in the first half of the 20th century, a field that hasn’t been systematically studied yet by critics. This ideal point of view highlights the contents transmitted by the author to the young reader, underlines the relationship between the artist and the fascism and delineates the multimedia evolution of his children’s production. The analysis of the Rubino’s artistic thought, influenced by the contemporary trends, shows the peculiarities of his ironic style. It also guides to an educative consideration that examines the responsibilities of the author for young readers.

This thesis deals with Girolamo Savonarola and with his place in the imagination and collective memory of Italians from the early nineteenth century to the present. It examines the works of a variety of Italian fictional authors who turned to Savonarola in the belief that he could help them pursue objectives which, in their opinion, Italy and Italians should strive to achieve. At first, he was called upon by nationalist writers of the Risorgimento to inspire a people and convince it of the need for a free, united Italy. Later, as the new nation began to consolidate and Italians came to realize that unification had not delivered all that it had promised, Savonarola was employed in a negative way to show that military action and force were necessary to ensure Italy's progress to the status of great power. As Italians became more aware of the grave social issues facing their nation, he was called upon, once again, to help change social policy and to remind the people of its civic responsibility to the less fortunate members of society. The extent of Savonarola's adaptability is also explored through the analysis of his manipulation by the writers of Fascist Italy. Remarkably, he was used to highlight to Italians their duty to stand by Mussolini and the Fascist Regime during their struggle with the Catholic Church and the Pope. At the same time, however, one writer daringly used Savonarola's apostolate to condemn the Regime and the people's blind adherence to its philosophies. As Fascism fell and Italy began to rebuild after the Second World War, there was no longer a need for Savonarola to be used for political or militaristic ends. In recent times, emphasis has been placed on the human side of the Friar and he has been employed solely to guide Italians in a civic, moral and spiritual sense. From the Risorgimento to the present, the various changes in Italian history have been foreshadowed in the treatment of Savonarola by Italian fictional authors who turned to him in difficult times to help define what it is to be Italian.

Dante Alighieri is, undoubtedly, an enduring feature of the cultural memory of generations of Italians. His influence is such that the mere mention of a ‘dark wood’ or ‘life’s journey’ recalls the poet and his most celebrated work, the Divina Commedia. This study, however, seeks to examine the construction of the medieval Florentine poet, exemplified by the above assertion, as a potent symbol of the Italian nation. From the creation of the idea of the Italian nation during the Risorgimento, to the Liberal ruling elite’s efforts after 1861 to legitimise the new Italian nation state, and more importantly to ‘make Italians’, to the rise of a more imperialist conception of nationalism in the early twentieth century and its most extreme expression under the Fascist regime, Dante was made to play a significant role in defining, justifying and glorifying the Italian nation. Such an exploration of the utilisation of Dante in the construction of Italian national identity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aids considerably in an understanding of the conceptualisation of the Italian nation, of the issues engendered by the establishment of the Italian nation state, and the evolution of these processes throughout the period in question. The various images of Dante revealed by this investigation of his instrumentalisation in the Italian process of nation-building bear only a fleeting resemblance to what is known of the poet in his medieval reality. Dante was born in 1265 to a family of modest means and standing in Florence, at that time the economic centre of Europe, and one of the most important cities of the Italian peninsula. His writings disclosed, however, that he was little impressed by his city’s prestige and wealth, being instead greatly disturbed by its political discord and instability, of which he became an unfortunate victim. The violent partisan conflict in Florence and the turbulent political condition of the Italian peninsula in the late thirteenth century had a decisive influence on Dante’s life and literary endeavours.