Regional culture as a vehicle of nationalism in Italian textbooks : school policy and publishers’ interests in the regional book for primary schools (1924-1927)

In 1923 an important reform in state education was put forward in Italy; it was so concerned with school- and reading books that it changed the survey of Italian book publishing, by state revision of texts and by the introduction of new books in syllabuses, such as the Almanacchi regionali (regional almanacs). These books were to bring regional culture into schools, families and public libraries, to create a national culture for young generations in a country which, in spite of the political unification in 1861, was still far from linguistic and cultural unity, especially among the lower social classes. In accordance with the debate on regionalism, which had been lively since the political unification, the reformers believed that teaching in state schools should be inspired by popular culture, and regional culture should be a step towards the ideal of the homeland. That is why the almanacs (one for each region) had to contain tales from the popular tradition, vernacular texts and poems, traditional sayings, regional folklore together with a national calendar, tales from the unification, information about the royal family and portraits of national heroes. After making clear the reasons and the choices, both political, pedagogical and economic, that brought about the publication of a great number of “regional almanacs” collections over such a brief period (and to their quick decline), the paper describes the collection published from 1924 to 1927 by Mondadori, one of the biggest Italian publishing houses, pointing out the peculiar features of those booklets (format, images, graphic choices) and their content.