UC San Diego

This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach, in order to contribute to aspects of Comparative Literature, Ecocriticism, Cultural Studies and Food Studies, as well as to make two important contributions to Italian Studies. First, to Italian literature of the Resistance which, although well established within Italian studies, has received surprisingly little attention with regard to the influence of peasant support in the success of the Resistance during World War II. Second, my ecocritical approach represents a relatively new specialization within Italian Studies, an approach that considers the ways in which human actions are strictly related to, and dependent upon, the natural environments in which they take place.

This dissertation offers also a reinterpretation of the concept of the organic intellectual as proposed by Gramsci, so as to better understand the relationship between peasants and the progressive Italian intellectual class that emerged after WWII. I conclude that after WWII, conversely to what Gramsci claims in his famous essay, The Formation of the Intellectuals, peasants create their organic intellectuals.

My reading proposes a more active vision of the peasant, and offers to Italian Studies, Comparative Literature and ecocriticism new instruments by which to interpret peasant culture and tradition. Through the authors presented in my chapters, I highlight a mode of thinking, a culture in terms of peasant tradition, and a way of more specifically valuing the often-clouded relationship between humans and their natural surroundings. By analyzing these authors, I determine the methods by which the Resistance and peasant traditions left a legacy, clearly present in contemporary forms of activism, which are related to food and agriculture. To this purpose, I considered it fundamental to use an approach that would encompass both theory and practice in which peasant culture, concerns of sustainability, and the recent forms of activism related to farming, food, and environment are all related and interconnected.