«Vagabondaggi» culturali per l’Italia di Mary Shelley

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s interest in Italy is seen in her historical novel Valperga: or The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823). The writer had been to Italy several times and had written impressive articles on the country and its culture; and for a while the translation of Manzoni’s I promessi sposi was amongst her work projects. The two volumes of Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 belong to 1844. These are written in epistolary form, as was often the case with travel books. The greater part is dedicated to Italy. There are examples of the beauty of the landscape, artistic works, fashions and customs. There are attempts to correct the largely negative judgements passed on Italians by travellers since the eighteenth century. Italy is experiencing years of deep political and cultural renewal. Mary Shelley writes favourably of the Resurgence/Risorgimento, although condemning the ‘Carbonari’ and ‘The Young Italy’ as secret societies. She dedicates much space to Italian literature: quoting Dante several times, and mentioning Petrarch, Ariosto, Berni, Tasso, Alfieri and Monti. Her judgement of the Renaissance is not however completely positive: its classicism, she believed, lead to a lack of originality. At the end of the eighteenth century there began a deep renewal that lead to Romanticism. Shelley writes that in Italy one reads less than in England or France, but that there are many contemporary writers: Foscolo, Berchet, Grossi, Pellico, D’Azeglio, and above all Manzoni and Giovan Battista Niccolini. The historians Botta, Colletta and Amari are also admired.