Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T10:42:08.633Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anti-fascism for children: Ada Gobetti's story of Sebastiano the Rooster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Jomarie Alano
Jomarie Alano*
Affiliation:
Cornell Institute for European Studies, Ithaca, NY, USA
*
∗Email: jma49@cornell.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ada Gobetti's Storia del gallo Sebastiano represents one of her many anti-fascist activities. By the time of the story's creation, Ada Gobetti had lived under fascism for 16 years. While Sebastiano descended from a long line of non-conformists in children's literature, it imparted a very specific ideological and political agenda, since Sebastiano was born at the height of fascism. Read by thousands of Italian children during the war, the story provided a clever critique of Mussolini's attempt to make children conform to the fascist ideal. Through Sebastiano, Ada Gobetti enlisted parents and their children in her efforts to urge Italians to resist fascism. After the war, as vice-mayor of Turin, the first woman to hold such a position in Italy, Ada Gobetti worked diligently to effect positive reforms in the schools, and fought openly for the rights of Italian women and children. She also wrote extensively on child rearing and devoted much of the remainder of her life to pedagogic activities to promote a ‘democratic education’ for both children and their parents.

Keywords

anti-fascismfascismchildreneducational reformMussoliniTurinItalyAda Gobetti
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 69 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agnelli, S. 1975. We always wore sailor suits. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Allason, B. 1961. Memorie di una antifascista, 1919–1940. Milan: Edizioni Avanti.Google Scholar
Coppola, Almazià, Sebastiano, L., Il galletto ‘fatto a rovescio’. Il Giornale dei genitori (July–August 1988):45–6.Google Scholar
Andersen, H.C., and Adams, A. 1965. The ugly duckling. New York: Scribner [Originally published 1843].Google Scholar
Bonsels, W. 1922. The adventures of Maya the bee. New York: T. Seltzer [Originally published 1912].Google Scholar
Caprioglio, S. Bibliografia di Ada Prospero Marchesini Gobetti. Mezzosecolo 7 (1987–1989):228–39.Google Scholar
Collodi, C. 1983. Pipì, o, Lo scimmiottino color di rosa: E altri racconti dal ‘Giornale per i bambini’. Firenze: Salimbeni libreria [Originally published 1887].Google Scholar
Delzell, C. 1961. Mussolini's enemies: The Italian anti-fascist Resistance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, H.A.L. 1935. A history of Europe. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.Google Scholar
Fofi, G. Tra memorialistica e narrativa. Mezzosecolo 7 (1987–1989):314–22.Google Scholar
Gobetti, A. n.d. Unpublished manuscript concerning Storia del gallo Sebastiano. Archives of the Centro studi Piero Gobetti (ACSPG), Fondo Ada Prospero Gobetti. Turin, Italy.Google Scholar
Gobetti, A., and Croce, B. Carissima Ada, Gentilissimo Senatore: Carteggio, Ada Gobetti-Benedetto Croce, 1928–1952, ed. Caprioglio, Sergio. Mezzosecolo 7 (1987–1989):46–227.Google Scholar
Gobetti, P. 1919. Il problema della scuola media. Energie Nove 9 (March 1–15):125.Google Scholar
Gobetti, P. 1925. Croce oppositore. La Rivoluzione Liberale 4 (6 September):125. Quoted in Gobetti, P. 2000. On liberal revolution , ed. Urbinati, Nadia. Translated by McCuaig, William. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Koon, T. 1985. Believe, obey, fight: Political socialization of youth in fascist Italy, 1922–1943. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Louette, H. 1977. Introduction to Un coq pas comme les autres. Paris: Éditions G.P. Google Scholar
Loy, R. 2000. First words: A childhood in fascist Italy. Translated by Conti, Gregory. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Lyttelton, A. 1973. The seizure of power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929. Bath: Pitman Press.Google Scholar
Mack Smith, D. 1982. Mussolini. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
[Ada Gobetti], Margutte. 1940. Storia del gallo Sebastiano ovverosia il tredicesimo uovo. Milan: Garzanti.Google Scholar
Pugliese, S. 1999. Carlo Rosselli: Socialist heretic and antifascist exile. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tranfaglia, N. Una città tra guerra e pace. Mezzosecolo 7 (1987–1989):308–13.Google Scholar
Tutino, I. Il gallo Sebastiano di Ada Marchesini Gobetti. ACSPG, Fondo Ada Prospero Gobetti.Google Scholar
Vanek, W. Piero Gobetti and the crisis of the primo dopoguerra. Journal of Modern History (March 1965):1.Google Scholar
Virdia, F. 1964. Quattro libri per ragazzi. La voce repubblicana, January 5.Google Scholar