Dal nazionalismo alla letteratura del disincanto. Le feu di Henri Barbusse

Abstract

From nationalism to disenchantment. Le Feu by Henri Barbusse The decline of literary nationalism is determined to some extent by an always stronger Europeanism and by the diffusion of a way of writing that is intended as a form of testimony, free from any ideological approach. The nationalist novel and the patriotic one are replaced by novels that show the need of some audacity, as in Le Feu by Henri Barbusse. Le Feu is a troublesome novel, it questions the exaltation of national identity, it calls for pacifism and internationalism, it breaks with the nationalistic and patriotic tradition and presents itself as a model for the literature in the 1920s because it opens up the way to the realism of the First World War and reports, even if not in terms of historiography, the horrors of the war.