California Italian Studies

There are many famous verses in italian poetry that prophesy a glorious and powerful Italy to come. This article describes how those verses of Dante, Petrarca, Leopardi and Foscolo were read, in the 1920's and the 1930's, as a precise and clear prediction of fascist Italy. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that this kind of literary criticism, considering poetry as a privileged voice of political prophecy, is not to be considered as a marginal and anecdotal expression of propaganda, but as a part of a larger phenomenon: the sacralization of politics – even through literature – that characterizes italian fascism.