Detecting Nineteen Eighty-Four in Italian Alternate History and Future/Past Narratives (1948–1984)

Abstract

Due to its structural complexity, Nineteen Eighty-Four poses itself as a real watershed within dystopian literature, involving a vision of history conceived as a discontinuous and non-linear progress. By such a token – and because of its enduring ability to spread to other cultural contexts – the representation of totalitarianism in Orwell's last novel is translated into a narrative structure with implicit uchronic components, exerting its impact also in the field of alternate history. This article aims to examine the various reverberations of Nineteen Eighty-Four, focusing on the Italian panorama and, in particular, on the unfinished novel by Corrado Alvaro (Belmoro), the uchronies of Guido Morselli (Roma senza papa and Contro-passato prossimo), and the short story by Luigi Malerba 4891. Ranging from the 1950s to the early 1980s, Alvaro, Morselli, and Malerba's works, through the combined devices of dystopia and alternate history, offer a critical picture of the transformations of Italian society in those years.