Emilio Zucchetti - Böcker

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci’s theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci’s understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection.With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci’s works in particular.

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci’s theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci’s understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection.With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci’s works in particular.

Between the two World Wars, many European countries propagated nationalist and racist narratives based on idealized images of a distant past. The role of ancient history (both as a scientific discipline and as a repository of figures, places, people) in the elaboration of these narratives in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany is well-documented, whereas significantly less is known about how ancient history was studied and mobilized in other national contexts during the Interwar period. The comparative approach of this study is invited by the substantial agreement among contemporary historians about the international nature of Fascism as a nationalism longing for a palingenetic and modernist refoundation of the nation in the contemporary age. The racist and nationalist use of the past is functional to this project of constructing a national and racial identity that, originated in antiquity, projects itself into the future. In this edited volume, the authors aim to contribute to the discussion on the study and use of ancient history by exploring historiographical traditions and historical narratives on the ancient world from a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective including studies on underinvestigated geographical areas.