Building a Nation: The National Question In Vamba's Giornalino della Domenica, First Series (1906-1911)

Launched in Florence in June, 1906, Giornalino della Domenica was the prototypical modern periodical for children in Italy.¹ It was designed to incorporate and further the principles that inspired its direct predecessor, Giornale per i bambini, founded in 1881, which was renowned for having published the adventures of Pinocchio in serialized form before they came out as a volume in 1883. However, unlike many of its other predecessors, whose function was largely to supplement and reinforce educational literature, Giornalino was aesthetically attractive by way of its colorful and elegant covers, echoed in the bright illustrations interspersed with text inside, drawn by prominent artists of the time. [see below]

Covers, Il giornalino della Domenica (Giunti Archives)

Giornalino was also completely, "cheekily" aimed at small people alone, both children and adolescents, who were encouraged not merely to actively help produce and write it, but also to promote initiatives intended to sustain its identity and perpetuate the sense of community and fraternity laid down as one of its main inspiring forces. To this effect, Giornalino was sustained by an overarching, coherent program made up primarily of national and patriotic concerns. Giornalino had, in fact, inherited from Giornale per i bambini the drive and enthusiasm directed toward consolidating the unity of the Italian nation. Giornalino took the aims of Giornale per i bambini even further, striving to cement in the young generations a sense of national identity in the recently, and yet not entirely, unified Italy.

Even though an Italian identity had existed virtually since the demise of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D., Italy experienced an extended period of disunity and political and economic disaggregation. Following a disappointing Restoration and Vienna Congress (1815), the numerous revolutionary uprisings shaking up the whole of Europe in 1848 brought prominently to the fore a generalized sense of disaffection for the current political divisions. In Italy, the Savoy Monarchy, sustained by the intellectual, diplomatic, and military efforts of Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso di Cavour, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, was at the forefront of the unification drive. Following Garibaldi's successful expedition to Sicily in 1860 (the "Mille"), the first Parliament of a unified Kingdom of Italy convened in 1861. Further portions of land, however, would only be incorporated later—the northeastern borders of the city Trieste and the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in particular, remained firmly outside the confines of Italy until the end of the First World War in 1918.

In this unitarian context Giornalino played a fundamental role in pursuing both vocally and relentlessly a patriotic program advocating that key portions of land at the northeastern borders, namely Trieste, Istria, and the Dalmatian coastline, be incorporated to Italy. [see map on next page]

Northeastern borders of Italy

While retaining a great deal of autonomy and, to a great extent, their original Venetian-born profile and identity, Trieste and much of its hinterland had belonged administratively to Austria (later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire) since the fourteenth century. However, both locally and more widely in Italy, these territories were largely perceived as Italian both culturally and linguistically.

My aim in the present paper is to shed some light on the national and occasionally nationalistic ideology of Giornalino as it emerged, in particular, from the privileged relationship established with the northeastern borders. This relationship manifested itself, as we shall see, in heightened visibility granted to news and events from Trieste and the area, in frequent epistolary and tourist/ cultural exchanges between the Florentine editorial board and the large and active Triestine group, and, particularly, in the assiduous, at times even exaggerated, attention devoted to the Triestine readership, with a view to reinstating Trieste's incorporation within the geo-political, as well as cultural, confines of Italy. This informing national aspect did not detract from the overall artistic and pedagogic value of the periodical, even though its ideology ended up carrying significant resonance in the light of two historical experiences that were shortly to follow and that were even more decisively...