Romanticism and Italy

1
Romanticism and Italy
2
Critical attitudes towards Romanticism

• First The literature of the I / Eye
• Imagination
• Sublimity
• Politics of vision
• Self against society
• More Recently (starting with Abrams 1962)
• Attention to the encounter with history
• Attention to ideology
• Attempt to recover repressed social and political
  history behind supposedly lyrical outbursts.
• Seen at the roots of modernity

3
Romantic Italy

• Focus on the cultural geography of the Romantics,
  a topical trend, is part of the historicizing
  attitude towards Romanticism
• the Italian elsewhere was appropriated and
  distorted to express some recurrent local
  concerns
• The idea of a nation
• Confrontation between liberal and conservative
  views
• Power and the role of the individual
• Ideas of masculinity and femininity

4
New climax of interest in Italy

• Travel after exclusion
• All great Romantic poets travelled to Italy or
  lived there
• Study of Italian language, literature, art
• fascination with the beauty of Italian scenery in
  an age in which love of nature was so important
• Italy seen at the intersection of the real and
  the imaginary.
• fascination with Italian history

5
Fascination with Italian history and politics

• At a time of definition of national identity,
  Italy was seen as the site of a common European
  heritage
• Ties of English Romantics with French revolution
  focused their attention on Italys plight under
  French rule and after the Restoration
• Many Italian political exiles had taken refuge in
  England (e.g. Foscolo, Mazzini, Berchet,
  Rossetti) spreading news about their countrys
  oppression
• First stirrings of a fight for freedom and
  independence were perceived with sympathy.
• As the geopolitical horizons of Britains
  literature were expanding due to colonial,
  commercial and naval expansion, attention was
  called to the first and foremost of Englands
  others

6
Narratives

• Related to emergent ideas of the nation
• Conflicting concepts of nation elaborated during
  the Romantic period.
• Different political and ideological imports.
• Filter of historians such as De Sismondi
  idealizing the Italian Middle Ages
• Emotional appeal of heroism of a people fighting
  against foreigners

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Literary forms

• Narratives
• Metrical tales and verse romances
• Serious (e.g. Shelleys Julian and Maddalo
• Satirical (e.g. Byrons Beppo)
• Prose romances (gothic novels, historical novels)
  (e.g. Mary Shelleys Valperga)
• Travel accounts(e.g. Lady Morgans Italy)
• Poetic plays (e.g. Shelleys The Cenci)
• Lyrical poetry
• Personal against Italian background (Shelley
  Stanza written in Dejection, Lines Written
  among the Etganean Hills )
• On Italian historical events Ode to Naples
• On Italian personalities
• E,.g. Byron The Lament of Tasso