Eroe sportivo e memoria collettiva. Bartali nella letteratura per ragazzi: un paradigma culturale della generazione postmemory.

Abstract

This paper analyses the relationship between sporting heroes and collective memory, through a specific case study: the Gino Bartali biography. Usually, this type of narrative is referring to sporting heroes and their extraordinary performances and successes; instead, in this case, we talk about Bartali not only as a sporting hero but also in the context of relevant national historic events, defining more clearly the relationship between memory and history. In this paper, we analyse the post memory studies (Hirsch, 2012) wherever these scholars use the human and sporting champion biographies to pass down human and political value-based messages to younger generations. In other words, the social memory (Halbwachs) will be used to build a generational imaginary.

Keywords

• Bartali
• sporting hero
• collective memory
• cycling
• national identity