The essay aims to examine the monumental inscriptions of the Great War in Italy as forms of displayed writing, analyzing their morphology and typology and exploring their verbal and non-verbal meanings over time. The carnage of the Great War caused the disappearance of more than ten million soldiers worldwide, around six hundred thousand in Italy alone. This staggering mortality gave rise to rituals intended to perpetuate an unprecedented memory, characterized by the proliferation of plaques, monuments, memorial parks and avenues, monumental asylums, and shrines. Death invaded public spaces, was hyper-celebrated, and placed at the center of urban environments. Each monument was accompanied by a funerary inscription—texts dedicated to the dead but designed to instruct and shape the community of the living. The inscriptions dedicated to the war reveal a rhetorical development that moves from a semantic field centered on the concept of grief for the fallen toward a triumphal horizon. The deconstruction of phrases, the frequency of words, and syntactic style allow us to grasp the evolution of representations and images related to the conflict. A rhetorical trajectory that simultaneously encompasses the intimacy of suffering and the patriotic exaltation of the nation.
Escribir en el mármol. Las inscripciones monumentales de la Primera Guerra Mundial en Italia
GRAZIANO MAMONE
2025-01-01
Abstract
The essay aims to examine the monumental inscriptions of the Great War in Italy as forms of displayed writing, analyzing their morphology and typology and exploring their verbal and non-verbal meanings over time. The carnage of the Great War caused the disappearance of more than ten million soldiers worldwide, around six hundred thousand in Italy alone. This staggering mortality gave rise to rituals intended to perpetuate an unprecedented memory, characterized by the proliferation of plaques, monuments, memorial parks and avenues, monumental asylums, and shrines. Death invaded public spaces, was hyper-celebrated, and placed at the center of urban environments. Each monument was accompanied by a funerary inscription—texts dedicated to the dead but designed to instruct and shape the community of the living. The inscriptions dedicated to the war reveal a rhetorical development that moves from a semantic field centered on the concept of grief for the fallen toward a triumphal horizon. The deconstruction of phrases, the frequency of words, and syntactic style allow us to grasp the evolution of representations and images related to the conflict. A rhetorical trajectory that simultaneously encompasses the intimacy of suffering and the patriotic exaltation of the nation.
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