Negotiating Foreign Influence in Fascist Italy: Nicola Festa on Greek Learning in Renaissance Humanism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how the classical scholar Nicola Festa (1866–1940) outlined a fascisticized account of Renaissance humanism in a series of lectures later published as his Umanesimo (1935). It specifically examines Festa’s treatment of the role of Byzantine Greek scholars in Italian humanism. Fascism’s preoccupation with romanità and italianità implied a cultural anxiety over indebtedness to cultures regarded as foreign, un-Roman, and un-Italian. Greek language and culture posed a specific challenge as they had traditionally been regarded as both foreign and familiar to Italy’s national culture. This paper analyzes Festa’s response to this friction in his discussion of the Greek presence in Italian humanism, demonstrating how he dissociated the ‘Romans’ of Byzantium from the ‘true’ Italian representatives of humanism. The case study sheds some light on the understudied ways in which non-Italian influences could be negotiated in fascisticized accounts of Italian culture.