Introduction A Hellenic Modernism: Greek Theatre and Italian Fascism

Abstract The introduction to the special issue explores the central place of Greek theatre within the culture of Italian Fascism. Building on scholarship from the so-called cultural turn in the study of fascism, which variously identified fascism with a form of modernism, it demonstrates that a dialogue between modernism and classicism was fully at work in the performances of ancient drama occurring all over the Italian peninsula and in the colonies in North Africa. The term ‘Hellenic modernism’ is introduced here to underline the fusion of Greek theatre with distinctively modernist traits during the ventennio and provide an analytical tool for investigating the role of classical performances and spectacles within Fascism’s programme of cultural and national renewal.