As late as 1815, Italy was thought to be a mere "geographical expression." However, for over two millennia, inhabitants throughout the Italian Peninsula shared many common cultural practices and collective memories, even though they lacked a unified country until only recently (1861). This course will explore the dramatic relationship between the quest for Italian Unification and the Romantic movement in Italy. We will consider how the eccentric and ambivalent nature of Italian Romanticism--one influential critic claimed "il romanticismo italiano non esiste"--derived from the fact that many Italian writers of the late 1700s and 1800s were unable to reconcile their conflicting desires for aesthetic autonomy and sociopolitical engagement. We will also examine how the reception of "Romantic Italy" influenced the course of Italian national identity-formation and literary and cultural practices in the period between Unification and World Wars I and II. Among the works and issues we will study are Alfieri's critique of the French Enlightenment in the name of Italian culture, Melchiorre Gioia's prize-winning essay on Italian unity during the Napoleonic invasion of 1796, the flood of Romantic manifestoes occasioned by Madame de Staël's essay on translation in 1816, Manzoni's eschewal of poetry in the name of Italian history in On the Historical Novel (1850), the emergence of the politicized Poeta-Vate (poet-prophet) in D'Annunzio and Carducci, and the critique of Romantic Italy in the Futurist manifestos (c. 1900-1910) of Marinetti and then later in Fascist cultural discourse.

TEXTS:

1. V. Alfieri, The Prince and Letters

2. M. Gioia (essay)

3. U. Foscolo, Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis

4. G. Leopardi, Poetry (selections)

5. A. Manzoni, On the Historical Novel

6. M. de Staël, "On Translation"

7. Manifesti romantici (Borsieri, DI Breme, Berchet)

8. S. Pellico, My Prisons

9. G. Mazzini, On the Duties of Man

10. I. Nievo, Confessioni Di un Italiano (selections)

11. G. D'Annunzio (selections)

12. G. Carducci (selections)

13. Futurist manifestos (Marinetti et al.)

Also: writings on Italy by J. W. Goethe, Germaine de Staël, P. B. Shelley, Stendhal, and other European travelers in/commentators on Italy.