The Legacy of Benedetto Croce: Contemporary Critical Views by Jack D'Amico , Dain A. Trafton , Massimo Verdicchio (review)

Abstract

MLR, 99.1, 2004 219 motherhood. In short, the book is a welcome addition to the swelling bibliography on Italian women's writing directed initially at an Anglo-American market, a companion piece to individual and collective enterprises such as the volumes by Kroha, Wood, and Barahski and Vinall, and Panizza and Wood's A History of Women's Writing in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), which includes complementary studies by a number ofthe same critics (although, interestingly,a cross-check for Cecilia Stazzone reveals that even this important publication is not exhaustive in its coverage). Much has been achieved but there is also much more to be done, not least in the editing of source texts, both literary and non-literary, and the further teasing out of the ideological, moral, and intensely personal contradictions experienced by these women writers and alluded to by so many of the contributors. Lastly, some quibbles. The provision of an index, particularly given the recurrence of individual names and issues in contributions across the volume, would definitely have been helpful. There are also occasional signs of a need forfurtherminor editorial intervention and some misprints have slipped through, most notably the date of Neera's death, given as 1816 (p. 44), and Beccari appearing as Baccari (p. 112). University of Bristol Judith Bryce The Legacy ofBenedetto Croce: Contemporary Critical Views. Ed. by Jack D'Amico, Dain A. Trafton, and Massimo Verdicchio. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press. 1999. xiv +244 pp. ?35- ISBN 0-8020-4484-0. In the cultural ethos of post-war Italy, dominated by a drive for reconstruction and renewal, Italian intellectuals were only too readily disposed to spot the conservative element in Croce's thinking and read it into the whole of his production. Despite the acknowledgement of his importance in pre-war Italy by isolated individuals like Bobbio and Garin, Croce has never recovered fromthis onslaught in his own country, except in his adopted city of Naples, where the study of his work is now concentrated. For decades, in school and university textbooks on philosophy his marginalization has taken the form of depicting his work as a form of idealist system-building now historically defunct. As someone who acknowledges having in many ways shared this historic misjudgement of Croce, I feel that a contribution addressing the problem of his neglect in post-war Italian culture would have made a welcome addition to the present volume, not least because Italian intellectual life is the poorer forhis neglect. Not surprisingly, the Anglo-Saxon academic world has been readier to revisit Croce's work, and the present volume is a further contribution to the revival of interest in his writings outside Italy. The firstthree studies, by Massimo Verdic? chio, Jack D'Amico, and Thomas Willette, concentrate on his early writings about Naples. Verdicchio links Croce's studies of popular legends to developments in his theory of history from its initial identification with art to its later and more enduring identification with philosophy. D'Amico examines Croce's writings on the commedia dell'arte of Naples, and sidesteps the philosopher's later disclaimers concerning these early writings to illustrate his ability to combine critical erudition with philosophical imagination. Willette's sensitive essay on Croce's early writings on historical places, monuments, and municipal preservation effortsargues persuasively that Croce's repudiation of these earlier writings conceals 'the complexity and unresolved contradictions of his life' (p. 74). Renata Viti Cavaliere shows how Croce's historicism highlighted the historical contingency of philosophical truths without, however, lapsing into relativism, while Dain A. Trafton's discussion of Croce's History of the Kingdom of Naples is devoted to an analysis of how the author discredited contemporary attitudes towards the Mezzogiorno and injected into his interpretation concepts of human freedom, creativity, 220 Reviews and responsibility to inspire the region's future leaders. Maurice A. Finocchiaro pro? vides a critical comparison with the thought of the elite theorist Gaetano Mosca, and characterizes Croce's political liberalism as a 'pluralistic elitism' (p. 117), in the pro? cess challenging the widespread thesis about his anti-scientific prejudice. The thrust of Myra Moss's contribution is to highlight differences between Croce...