Luigia Codemo: appunti per una biografia intellettuale

Abstract

This article offers an intellectual biography of the 19th century writer Luigia Codemo. While Codemo’s writing directly originates from the Manzoni's historical novel, which inspires her interest for the lower levels of the society (for the “genti meccaniche e di piccolo affare”), it nevertheless also refers to the vast body of short stories, to all the exempla, the moral narrations and the “true stories” that are to be found among the pages of Gozzi’s periodical «Gazzetta Veneta», as well as to the conversations in Venice’s campielli as Goldoni describes them, or to the sentimental and romantic plots of serial novels. Such a heterogeneous mix of narrative genres represents the main feature of Codemo’s writing: it is through a combination of short stories, tableaux, novels, dramas and sketches that she tries, just after Italy’s unification, to meet the needs of cultural integration and pacification of people’s “hearts”. By creating popular literature Codemo aimed at «making the Italians», exhorting them to work toward the good and pointing out a set of social and domestic «small virtues» related to the obligations towards God, the nation and the family. The most important device of Codemo’s educational pattern, which she made her “mission”, is the book that narrates true (i.e. biographies) or likely stories (i.e. familial pictures), with verisimilar heroes, like the worker and inventor Beniamino Franklin. Influenced by the romantic interest for the «good and gentle customs of the common people», Codemo aims to «educate and polish the crowd’s manners». An unknown chapter of her life is the philanthropic action, which intersects a developing female occupation in the contemporary Venice. It was there that Mazzini’s heritage was turned into pedagogical activities, such as in the undertakings of Rosa Piazza and Laura Goretti Veruda for the education of good mothers and for the institution of vocational schools for women. In taking part in such charitable activities Codemo also finds a symbolic compensation for her own maternal experience, tragically upset by the premature death of her son.