Enemy and Officers in Emilio Lussu's Un anno sull'Altipiano

Content Provider	Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Author	Dario Marcucci
Abstract	This essay explores the concept of enemy in Emilio Lussu’s WWI memoir Un anno sull’Altipiano (A Soldier on the Southern Front, 1938). The memoir portrays the conflict on the oft-forgotten Alpine Front, where Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies clashed from 1915 to 1918 in a series of battles fought at high altitudes. I argue that two crucial dynamics of modern warfare shape the concept of enemy in WWI literature: the impossibility of close-range encounters, which was due to the superiority of defensive firepower, and hatred for one’s own officers, which stemmed from the corrosive environment of the trenches, where the aggressive attitude of high-ranking officers often led hundreds of thousands to pointless death. I show how, in Lussu’s memoir, these dynamics subvert the traditional image of the enemy as imposed by military propaganda, and finally elicit feelings of empathy.
Related Links	https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/1/26
ISSN	20760787
DOI	10.3390/h8010026
Journal	Humanities
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	8
Language	English
Publisher	MDPI AG
Publisher Date	2019-01-01
Publisher Place	Switzerland
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	History of scholarship and learning. The humanities World War I Italian Front Memoir Emilio Lussu Trench Warfare
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary