<i>Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom</i> (review)

Abstract

ITALIA ROMANTICA: ENGLISH ROMANTICS AND ITALIAN FREEDOM. By Roderick Cavaliero. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008. Pp. x + 246. ISBN 978 1 84511 456 5. £9.99. Originally issued in hardback in 2005, over the last few years the book under review has received a fair share of attention - and a not insignificant amount of notice and praise - in a variety of newspapers, magazines and journals. As the press release accompanying the book indicates, reviewers have presented Italia Romantica as a 'lively informative survey' of the works and attitudes of Romantic English travellers and writers concerned with Italy, a book, according to the Times Literary Supplement, that 'brings us the frisson of the foreign, encountered in many forms'. In the Keats-Shelley Review, Italia Romantica has been described as a 'fascinating book' and 'a delightful cornucopia of absorbing details and intriguing, sometimes surprising connections', while The Economist has praised its 'highly entertaining account of English views of Italy' at a time when 'the British were launching themselves on the path of imperial greatness'. There is much in these judgements that may be agreed with. Cavaliero's book is undoubtedly wide-ranging and generous in its cultural reconstructions, an entertaining read full of intriguing details and connections, and a lively performance all round. Unfortunately, it is also beset with problems that, for the present reviewer, need to be addressed before considering its more valuable aspects. True enough, in spite of its rich bibliography and abundant endnotes, Cavaliero's book is not an academic publication. But its faults - some quite venial, others much more serious - should not appear in any type of publication, whether aimed at specialists or general readers. I will begin with the more venial problems. Although the book is an animated and eminently readable tour de force, sometimes its style lapses into some uncomfortably bathetic moments. A reader may smile at an image of Robert Southey 'nose down in Lisbon, writing an immense History of Brazil'; yet, when the author tells us that Gothic atmospheres could make Jane Austen's 'Henry Tilney's hair stand on end' but were 'not enough to cause Julia or Emily or Ellena to wet their knickers', this is perhaps taking the notion of a captivating conversational style a bit too far. However, since style is by definition a deeply subjective feature, perhaps not all readers will be put off by such discontinuities in register. It is when the book's content is considered that the problems become more serious, as Cavaliero's account regularly treats his readers to a number of statements that are either puzzling or just plain wrong. I'll quote just a few. Polidori's The Vampyre is misleadingly described as 'the entertainment that started the competition in the Villa Diodati'. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is presented as an early apologia pro vita italiana sua: 'She walked in beauty like the [Italian] night'. Manfred is described as one of Byron's 'heroic narratives' and grouped together with The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara and The Siege of Corinth. There are also problems with names, for instance that of the Humanist who features in the book as 'Poggio Bracciolino', or the Tuscan warlord known as 'Castruccio Castracane, Lord of Valperga' on page 40 and then as 'Castruccio Castracano' on page 63. But it is not just the Italians who get the occasional unfair treatment. For instance, discussing Felicia Hemans's play The Vespers of Palermo, the author tells us that 'Mrs Siddons' (and we are to suppose Sarah) 'agreed to play the romantic female lead, Constance, the sister of the last Hohenstaufen emperor whom the Angevins had executed' in April 1822, when 'Walter Scott produced [the] play for the Edinburgh theatre'. In actual fact, Scott did not 'produce' the play, it was not Sarah Siddons, who had already retired from the stage, who acted in it, but rather Mrs Henry Siddons (Harriet Murray), and the character of Constance is absolutely not the 'sister of the last Hohenstaufen emperor'. …