Cesare Paperini was a teacher and educator active at a prestigious Jesuit college, the Istituto Massimo, in Rome. During the ventennio fascista, he authored numerous textbooks for schools, some with clear political overtones aligning with Fascist principles (Pankhurst 1972: 391). His educational work includes annotated extracts from classical and Italian writers as well as historical outlines (Ascenzi and Sani 2009: 330–331, 406, 426, 458). It also features a Latin language textbook that emphasizes the active use of the ancient language (Paperini 1938). The book’s aim was explicitly tied to Mussolini’s vision for revitalizing Italy and the regime’s effort to revive the heritage of ancient, particularly imperial, Rome (Paperini 1938: 7; Sacré 2020). It offers Latin texts on everyday topics, accompanied by succinct lexical and grammatical annotations.

Bibliography

Latin works

Paperini, Cesare. 1938. Impara a parlare e a scrivere nella lingua latina. Rome: La Nuova Scuola.

Secondary sources

Ascenzi, Anna, and Roberto Sani. 2009. Il Libro per la scuola nel ventennio fascista: la normativa sui libri di testo dalla riforma gentile alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale, 1923–1945. Macerata: Alfabetica.

Pankhurst, Richard. 1972. ‘Education in Ethiopia during the Italian Fascist Occupation (1936–1941)’. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (3): 361–96.

Sacré, Dirk. 2020. ‘De colloquiis quibusdam scholasticis intra vicennium fascale conscriptis’. Conventiculum anni 2019 Latinum.

Han Lamers