Introduction

The period from 1969 to 1983 was marked by a streak of politically motivated violence unparalleled in contemporary European history. Motivations and memory are wrapped in a self-mythologizing aura that renders crucial the study of the representation of terrorism and political violence in order to fully understand the ideological climate of those years and its cultural refraction. It becomes important to analyse how language was used and deployed in connection with political violence, to elucidate the linguistic and rhetorical strategies which legitimated, encapsulated, and prompted strategic violent actions. The protagonists of a social drama respond to and clothe themselves in their culture's stock of sedimented symbols, archetypal characters, and rhetorical appeals. The evident interrelation between collective imagination, fictional representation, social movements and political action signals the need to broaden the understanding of different kinds of texts. These texts include self-narratives, novels, films, historiography, and TV programmes.