Satisfying the mind and inflaming the heart: emotions and funerary epigraphy in nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

This article investigates the peculiar cultural importance of funerary epigraphy in nineteenth-century Italy. Epitaphs, considered as a main literary genre, were not only engraved on tombstones, but also published in anthologies and were the object of manuals, treatises, articles and critical reviews. These abundant discourses on funerary epigraphy offer historians a rare opportunity to gain insight into the emotional practices that developed around them, both inside and outside funerary space and time. The investigation of this literature highlights the awareness that emotions were crucial in reinforcing the pedagogical role attributed to the epitaph in transmitting religious, moral, civic and familial values to present and future generations.