From World Capital to National Capital: Literary Periodicals and the Construction of Modern Rome

Abstract

In the period that followed Italian unification, the city of Rome underwent a complex transformation of its cultural and political identity as it attempted to navigate its mythic past as imperial world capital, its present condition as provincial capital and its envisaged future as the national capital of a modern state. Focusing on the last three decades of the nineteenth century, this chapter explores the role of three major journals—Fanfulla della Domenica, Cronaca Bizantina and Il Convito—in the construction of Rome as the literary capital of the new nation. It maps the struggle over literary space that took place in the journals against the modernisation of the urban and social fabric of the city, and shows that Roman periodicals provided the platform for a debate about the relationship between Italian literature and world literature. The chapter also traces the emergence of a nationalist myth, strongly identified with Gabriele D’Annunzio, which occurred even as the new literary journals embraced ideas of cosmopolitanism and artistic autonomy.