Giuseppe Piazza and La nostra terra promessa

Abstract

La nostra terra promessa is the title of the reportage published by the Sicilian journalist Giuseppe Piazza and released by the monarchical editor Lux in late 1911. The book collects the articles sent by Piazza from Libya to the Roman newspaper La Tribuna during the previous months. In 1912, Piazza also published Come conquistammo Tripoli (Lux, 1912), where he collected his last articles written for La Tribuna from the Libian war front. La nostra terra promessa is a chimeric and grandiloquent description of Libya, aiming to present the conquest of this territory as an indispensable objective for Italy in terms of resources and prestige. In his reportage, Piazza also clearly develops the concept of the colonial war as a powerful way to unify the Italian people and to give a major role to the masses in the political and social life of Italy. Against Piazza’s voice, as well as Giuseppe Bevione’s and Enrico Corradini’s who also collected their articles from Libya into successful instant books, sided democrat politicians and writers such as Gaetano Salvemini and Napoleone Colajanni. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Piazza’s reportages with a linguistic and philological perspective and to put them in the historical and journalistic context.