La satira: uno specchio dell’antipolitica nell’Italia giolittiana

Abstract

In Italy, the satirical press has always had a wide readership. The historians, on the contrary, rarely have used the satirical press as a source in their studies, although it is a key source to history of mentality. More than any other means of expression, satire requires the complicity of his audience. The satirist, whether he want coax or whether disturb his readers, must confront with their mentality and he must start from it to develop the ways of expression and the content of the message. During the giolittian age the difficulty of building a successful relationship between the government and the citizens created the conditions for the diffusion of a general dissatisfaction with the ruling class and politics in general. In this context, the satire has played a significant role to represent the public opinion and it has offered a framework to the anti-politics feeling to express themselves. Looking to the pages of the «Travaso delle idee», a famous satirical magazine, we can be study and understand the mentality of middle class, and we can derive a paradigm of anti-politic rhetoric declined from satire