The essay intends to demonstrate the centrality of Dante and his greatest work, Divine Comedy, in the building of WWI memory in Italy. Many authors relied on Dantesque quotations and images to describe their terrible war experience. Dante was also largely used in war propaganda – newspapers, magazines, postcards – as one of the most significant symbols of the country. After the war, his Purgatory represented the model for one of the most important war cemeteries, while D’Annunzio – who had already relied on Dante’s words in May 1915 – symbolically linked Dante’s Hell to the Karst front.
