Between texts and the body: Italian soldiers’ writings and physical experience in the First World War
Journal title MEMORIA E RICERCA
Author/s Vanda Wilcox
Publishing Year 2011 Issue 2011/38 Language Italian
Pages 16 P. 25-40 File size 547 KB
DOI 10.3280/MER2011-038003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation
click here
Below, you can see the article first page
If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits
FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.
In discussions of combat experience too narrow a focus on soldiers’ psychological experiences and the cultural and social issues surrounding them risks obscuring the vital role of the body and of physical experience. In letters and diaries, Italian soldiers frequently describe their bodily experiences and transformations, enabling them to express their emotions obliquely through the use of the body as a metaphorical representation of the spirit. Building on international comparisons, this paper emphasises the centrality of the physical in our understanding of combatants’ experience. Soldiers’ bodies, which were transformed by changes in diet, fitness and health, acted as the primary vector through which military life was experienced. The paper analyses both the emotional impact of bodily transformations and the ways in which Italian soldiers represented these experiences in their writings.
Keywords: Soldiers, Bodily experience, Letter-writing, Health, Emotions; First World War
Vanda Wilcox, Tra testo e corpo l’esperienza fisica della Prima guerra mondiale negli scritti dei soldati in "MEMORIA E RICERCA " 38/2011, pp 25-40, DOI: 10.3280/MER2011-038003