Italian Themes Research Articles

Poetry of G.A. Levin on the pages of Saratov publications in the 20s of the XX century

The purpose of this article is to analyze the poetic works of the Saratov poet G.A. Levin, published on the pages of the periodicals «Artistic Saratov» and «Sarrabis» in Saratov in the 20s of the past century. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact for the first time the poems of G.A. Levin «The air shines with a blessed blue», «I know, a dark, beloved voice», «Chernyshevsky’s Monument», «The early coolness has been drained to the dregs», «Shakespeare» are mentioned. The article focuses on the aesthetic side of these poems, emphasizing their extreme lyricism and abundance of figurative means. In addition, this study notes the relevance of the poetry of G.A. Levin on the pages of these publications not only because of their external artistry, but also because of their ideological expressiveness. The editorial board of the magazines «Art Saratov» and «Sarrabis» considered the poems of G.A. Levin worthy of understanding, since the goal was to instill good taste in the Saratov reader of the 1920s and teach him to appreciate genuine literary works. As a result, the following was revealed: (a) G.A. Levin gives the images greater ideological and artistic capacity and expressiveness; (b) the poet uses metaphors and epithets not only as conventional methods of expressiveness, but also as forms of holistic knowledge of the essence of the Universe; (c) the poet paid special attention to love lyrics, intertwined Russian and Italian themes in individual poems, and resorted to Shakespearean heroes. The article notes the versatility of the poetic image, and the analysis of the poems is carried out taking into account the influence of the lyrics of famous poets of the Silver Age on Levin’s poetry.

Dialogic Aesthetics in Boris Zaitsev’s Russian-Italian Text

This article examines the interconnection of the images of Russia and Italy in B. K. Zaitsev’s artistic consciousness revealing their ideal-forming meaning and studying the literary and aesthetic concept of the writer. It is argued that the themes of Russia, Italy, and Florence dominate in the writer’s work, making up the internal semantic unity of his multi-genre texts. The “Florentine text” is interpreted as a local textual subsystem of the “Italian text”, which is a dialogical element of the Russian-Italian text (super-text) created by the writer throughout his artistic life. According to Zaitsev, the city of Dante formed his aesthetic experience, his spiritual, and intellectual identity. Building a dialogue between Russian literature and Dante’s work, Zaitsev follows the philosophical and aesthetic programme of Russian Europeanism characteristic of the Silver Age culture. In the article, the author develops the thesis about the relationship between the image of Russia and that of Florence in the artistic consciousness of Boris Zaitsev. It is demonstrated that the study of Zaitsev’s “Florentine text” provides an idea of the semantic conditionality between the leading Russian and Italian themes in the writer’s work that define his aesthetic concept as dialogical. To achieve this goal, the paper analyses Zaitsev’s artistic and documentary evidence about Florence and the features of his aesthetic reception of the culture of Russia and Italy. The article focuses on the method of literary mnemonics developed by the writer. With its help, Zaitsev creates an authorial version of the myth of Florence in the context of Russian and European literature. The reconstruction of the historical and ideological context of Zaitsev’s work proposed in the article makes it possible to understand the artistic and philosophical nature of his works addressed to Russia and Italy more accurately. As a result of the study, the author determines the structure of the dialogical interactions of imaginative and semantic elements of Zaitsev’s Russian-Italian narrative. Russian and Italian themes that form the dialogical integrity of the Russian-Italian text in the writer’s work are a key aspect of our understanding of B. K. Zaitsev’s artistic concept from the point of view of literary theory and aesthetics.

Лирический цикл А.А. Блока «Итальянские стихи»: поэтическая рецепция Италии и кульминация периода «антитезы»

The lyrical cycle of the A.A. Block “Italian Poems” (1909) is a travelogue of the poet (a number of contemplated cities), it is considered from three points of view: as reflecting the isolation of the poet-lyricist on his own experiences and embodying the central theme of Blok, denoted as passion; as a unity of variations in the composition of the whole (not previously considered), in the development of the poet’s central theme; as the part of the third volume in the concept of the poet’s path, which in spirit is the culmination of the period of “antithesis.” The Italian theme is analyzed in variations of the poet’s dominant intention, in the cycle it is the search for the object of passion. First, the history of Italy as a story of extinct passions awakening the passions of the poet (Galla); then the real women of Italy; finally, the poet’s passion turns to the Madonna of frescoes and sculptures, giving rise to demonic motives and blasphemously erotic culminations. The development of the theme of passions (realhistorical, feminine and Eternally Feminine) leads to the assertion of immortal art in the transitory world. The analysis of Blok’s Italian cycle suggests introducing of the new accents into the concept of the poet’s path, of its three stages: the cycle marks not the harmonization and search for synthesis of the third volume, but a dark culmination in the spirit of the period of tragic substitutions and “falls” of the “antithesis” stage.

Ліна Костенко: вітер з Італії

Italian motifs in the works of Lina Kostenko are examined. Her imagination, overcoming time and space, often “revives” the figures of great masters to see in their stories an eternal meaning of life. Through the optics of these figures, timeless themes and problems are revealed: the conflict of genius and crowd (Dante), ethical maxims of a self-demanding artist, always dissatisfied with his creative work (Michelangelo Buonarroti), the problem of broken / steadfast artist (dramatic poem Snow in Florence: Rustichi). The author examines the universal collisions developed by the poet at a high artistic level, which leads to seeing parallels and analogies in eternal plots, as Florence and Tour are “pseudonyms” of Ukraine of the totalitarian times, when poet/subject had to choose between conformism / nonconformism. It is emphasized that the analyzed works of Lina Kostenko on Italian themes confirm the idea that compromise, ethical instability, duality of soul, work to please the crowd are detrimental to the artist, who is called to sacrifice to establish high art in the world. Dramatic tension in the development of the plot, psychology of characters, dynamic dialogues, vivid figurative words — all this makes the works of the writer especially deep and artistically perfect.

Unity and/or Disunity in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poetry: Proto-Aestheticism, Cultural Politics, and Italian Nationalism at the Victorian Mid-Century

Revisiting the issue of Rossetti's response to politics, I argue that Rossetti's early work on Italian topics should be placed within the Risorgimento tradition of cultural nationalism that preceded and then ran alongside the political movement for Italian unification. Recent work by scholars such as Christopher Kierstead, Stefano Evangelisto, and Matthew Potolsky on cosmopolitan political discourse within Aestheticism and Decadence has shown that the age of ‘Art for Art's Sake’ does not turn away from politics, but rather re-defines its parameters. By re-situating Rossetti's writing on Italy in relation to issues of cultural nationalism I argue that his work can be regarded as a formative precursor to the development of this cosmopolitan aesthetic. I show how Rossetti's poetics on the topic of Italian unity returns a repeated experience of separateness – a failure of resolution defined politically, epistemologically, and aesthetically. Through exploring and analysing this episteme of separateness in his Italianate works and as an aesthetic principle that recurs throughout Poems (1870), I argue that Rossetti creates an alternate aesthetic of disunity which engages creatively with the modernity of the mid-century and creates the necessary preconditions for the subsequent phenomenon of Decadent cosmopolitanism to emerge. Rossetti's writing on Italy refutes most of the conventions of the tradition of cultural-nationalist writing but it is nevertheless embedded within it: I argue that an embedded reading of this Italian theme in his works is necessary to an understanding of the extent and character of Rossetti's poetic innovations of the mid-century.

A Real-Time Decision Platform for the Management of Structures and Infrastructures

Natural disasters and the poor management of civil engineering structures and infrastructures require timely action and new tools such as specially designed structural health monitoring platforms. This paper proposes an innovative platform based on a network of wirelessly connected, low-power, and renewable-energy-fed sensor units. The platform is a multipurpose tool for diagnostics, maintenance, and supervision, capable of simultaneously carrying out damage detection, localization, identification, and “multiclass” and “multi-material” level quantification of different types of failures. In addition, it works as a decision support tool for emergency management and post-disaster assessment, here tailored for an Italian theme park. The platform uses innovative algorithms based on the concept of the vibro-acoustic signature of the asset monitored. The vibro-acoustic signatures of the monitored assets are gathered by the microphones and accelerometers of the platform’s sensor units. Then, almost simultaneously, they are analyzed using specifically designed wavelet-based and convolutional-neural-network-based algorithms, which are able to extract crucial information about the structural and environmental conditions of both the asset and the areas of the thematic park. In addition, the platform shows escape routes during an emergency, indicating meeting points and helping people to proceed safely along a recognizable escape route to a safe place, as demonstrated by the simulations.

Italian Theme in the Old Russian Garden Art

The article reviews the Italian influence on the Russian garden art from the second half of the 15th to the end of the 17th century. It considers the version that the first “Italian” gardens were created during the period of the Moscow Kremlin architectural ensemble building and the surrounding area reconstruction. The appearance of the Moscow first “upper” gardens is associated with the construction of the Grand Prince’s Palace complex. The gardens were organized on the ground floor arches of the buildings. Planting of a vast garden across the Moscow River, opposite the Palace, was a part of the Italian development plan for the territory around the Kremlin and was based on the Renaissance principles of its construction - relocation of the garden from a confined space to an open, well-surveyed place. According to historical sources, despite the weakening of contacts with Italy, the “Italian” look of the Kremlin Palace had been carefully preserved up to the 17th century, when the upper gardens had become widespread. In the 17th century, there was growing interest in the countryside decorative gardens in Russia. The look and layout of some of the gardens around the suburban Tsar Estate Izmaylovo put foreign travelers in remembrance of Italian gardens. Those gardens were the “Apothecary Garden” and the “Garden with the Amusing Chambers and Maze”. Some literary descriptions and engravings confirm these assessments. Numerous examples of the West European garden art of the late Middle Ages could be found in one of Moscow districts - the German Quarter - where there were Italians among the permanent residents as well. The article analyzes the specific examples of utilization of the Italian Renaissance art in the creation of the Old Russian gardens.

Unpacking the temporal dimension of coopetition in tourism destinations: evidence from Finnish and Italian theme parks

Coopetition, namely the co-presence of cooperation and competition, is a new strategy that goes beyond the established business paradigms of competition and cooperation. This type of strategy is relevant in tourism destinations, for instance in theme parks, where competing, co-located companies also collaborate. In this paper, we address the temporal dynamics of interorganizational relationships in Finnish and Italian theme parks (i.e. Lapland and Riviera Romagnola). Our comparative study shows that cooperation and coopetition among tourism businesses often shift from a prevalently short-term basis to a long term one when public and private stakeholders understand the benefits accruing to cooperation in terms of enhancement of the brand image of the destination and attraction of a higher number of visitors, by leveraging the destination's multifaceted assets.

Itališki lietuvių istoriografijos žymenys

This article presents an analysis of Lithuanian-authored historiographical works on Lithuania‘s relations to Italy (previously the states of the Apennine peninsula). The first to undertake Lithuanian historical and cultural investigations in this direction were historians educated by, or active at, Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, including Jonas Totoraitis, Paulius Rabikauskas, Paulius Jatulis, and Zenonas Ivinskis; the latter three researched Italian archives (mostly Vatican and Roman) and wrote treatises based on studies of the development of Christianity in Lithuania and the historical cultural ties between Lithuania and Western Europe. Another trend in Lithuanian research on Italy focused on culture and took shape in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Its basis was historical material preserved in archives and manuscripts in Lithuania and neighboring countries, largely consisting of texts from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries. Two prominent research directions here were (1) investigations of the development of Renaissance culture and humanism in Lithuania, exemplified by the work of Juozas Jurginis, Ingė Lukšaitė, Juozas Tumelis, Marcelinas Ročka, and others; and (2) investigations of Latin culture revived during the Renaissance, including studies of the theory claiming the Roman origin of the Lithuanian aristocracy, and of the Latin-language heritage of ancient Lithuania so rich in scholarly treatises. A special place in Lithuanian historiography is occupied by the works of the Italian Balticists Pietro Umberto Dini and Guido Michelini. They were not only interested in the Lithuanian language but devoted attention to Lithuanian culture and Lithuanian-Italian cultural relations. Their work makes it clear that despite the political isolation that had long separated Lithuania and Italy, there was persistent scholarly interest on both sides in each other‘s country. The variety of Italian topics in the Lithuanian historiography of the last decade shows a growing interest in this field, caused in part by the possibility of living and studying in Italy and by the increased cultural cooperation between Lithuania and Italy. This interest was also stimulated by the search for new topics in the subject; and as the interwar period began to be increasingly studied, cultural cooperation between the two countries during that period naturally became a favored topic of research. Thus research on Italian themes in Lithuanian historiography is topically diverse and presents unique angles on Lithuanian culture and history.

Shinel', Polichinelle, Pulcinella: The Italian Ancestry of Akaky Bashmachkin

Does anything more need to be written about 'The Overcoat'? (295). Al though Dmitry Chizhevsky posed this question several decades ago, the an swer is still a resounding yes. This article offers a new perspective on Overcoat, suggesting that Nikolai Gogol drew on the Italian commedia del Varte character of Pulcinella while creating his quintessentially Russian civil servant, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin. I explore an Italianate subtext that has not been previously studied and suggest that core elements of the plot and narrative technique, as well as the name and personality of the protagonist, have strong parallels with elements of the commedia delVarte and its famous Pulcinella character, which Gogol was exposed to in Italy prior to writing Overcoat. The striking similarities between the Petersburgian Bash machkin and the Italian Pulcinella illustrate Vladimir Nabokov's perceptive observation that and Russia formed a combination of a deeper kind in Gogol's unreal world (Nabokov 1980, 44). While literary scholars have addressed the significance of Italian contexts and subtexts in Gogol's novella Rome and his essays on Italian art and archi tecture, little attention has been paid to how Gogol's impressions of the Italian performing arts in general, and of the commedia delVarte in particular, may have influenced his artistic imagination and the poetics of Overcoat.1 This tendency reflects the well-established critical tradition of analyzing Gogol's oeuvre within either the Ukrainian or Russian cultural context. Despite the diversity of critical approaches to Overcoat?from Boris Eikhen baum's formalist study to Daniel Rancour-Laferriere's psychoanalytical one existing scholarship views this story as being rooted within the Russian cultural context. My analysis of Italian themes supplements?rather than contradicts? the previous scholarship, and supports the view that Overcoat is a kaleidoscope that is open to a simultaneity of possible meanings (Graffy 118, Brombert 53, Fanger 162). Many previous studies have analyzed Gogol's brilliant sense of comedy, his extensive use of grotesque imagery, his unforget

Cervantes in Italy: Christian Humanism and the Visual Impact of Renaissance Rome

Toward end of 1569, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Miguel de Cervantes arrived in Rome to serve as chamberlain to young monsignor Giulio de Acquaviva, soon to be made a cardinal by Pope Pius V.1 The event marked beginning of a six-year sojourn about which surprisingly little is known with certainty. From scattered semiautobiographical references we can infer that Cervantes traveled widely and that he developed a particular fondness for Italy. We know for sure that he fought bravely against Turks at battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he received wounds that rendered his left arm useless for rest of his life, and that he remained in service as a soldier, based in Italy, until his ill-fated attempt to return to Spain in 1575. Ten years later, in dedication of his pastoral romance La Galatea to Ascanio Colonna, he reminded his dedicatee that reverence he had for him did not only stem from having served under his illustrious father, famous general Marco Antonio Colonna, but also from many things that he had heard Cardinal Acquaviva say, like prophesies, about him in Rome. There follows a brief encomium about virtues, magnificence, goodness, and Christianity that sustain clear and generous line of Colonnas, known to all for virtuous and heroic deeds that have been their mark since time immemorial.2 Some of Cervantes's best lyric poetry dates from these years. In it, as in rest of his work, unmistakable mark of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Bembo, to name but most explicit ones, leaves us in little doubt about his genuine love of Italian literature.For good reasons, modern biographers have been loath to take these scattered references too candidly. Can we, for example, assume that Cervantes had more than a very superficial acquaintance with Colonnas and Acquavivas? Could a writer still widely regarded as a self-taught, untutored mind realistically have attracted favors of some of most illustrious Roman and Neapolitan noble families? More pointedly, is it safe to take varied and abundant observations about Italy scattered throughout his works as reliable reflections of his own personal experiences? After all, between latter and written page there is a time lag often approaching forty years. Add to this weight of subsequent intellectual influences and of literary conventions, of novelistic invention and of viewpoints of characters themselves, and we are left on rather shaky ground. As Jean Canavaggio has remarked, it is not Cervantes keen visual observer, but rather Cervantes devoted reader of Boccaccio and novellieri who brings Italy and Italian themes into his fiction. Even memorable descriptions of Italian cities to be found in some of his novelas are rather formulaic passages, perfectly in tune with rhetorical canons of time.3Our topic, however, is not biography but intellectual history; and here we can afford to be more candid. There can be no doubt that many of Cervantes's descriptions have unmistakable ring of genuine experience. Take Tomas Rodaja's arrival, soaked, sleep-deprived and with bags under eyes, in Genoa's sheltered Mandraccio,4 where he becomes acquainted withthe smoothness of Trebbiano, fullness of Montefiascone, strength of Asperino, generosity of Greeks Candia and Soma, grandeur of one from Five Vineyards, sweetness and mellowness of lady Vernaccia, rustic touch of Centola, while lowly one from Rome dared not appear in presence of such illustrious gentlemen.5Charmed by gallantry of Genoese, Rodaja leaves by land for Rome, the queen of cities and mistress of world. Just as size and ferocity of a lion can be gauged by its claws, Cervantes observed,so Rome's greatness became manifest by its broken marbles, its statues . …

(review)

some of Stendhal'sfiction, with specialreferenceto the theme of claustrationin the Italian stories. Mariella Di Maio suggests that the final isolation of several protagonistsreflectsan unconscious Stendhalianwish to abolish the outsideworld. In 'Russie, melancolie' she argues that the hardship experienced in the Russian campaign was one of the important factors confirming Stendhal in his literary vocation. The majorpart of her book concerns itselfwith the Italianstories,and this is the most interestingsection. Di Maio compares Stendhal'streatment of the tragic real events of the Cenci storywith those of Artaudand Moravia.The latterwas closerto historicalfact, she explains, as in his version Beatrice was not raped by her father before she killed him. She reminds us that Stendhal was attractedto the character of Beatrice because of her energy. Other chapters deal with Stendhal's use of manuscriptsourcesin La Chartreuse deParme and his lifelong admirationfor Tasso, a sensitive, imaginative, and excessive individual with whom he felt much affinity. The section on 'Lecoeurmange' considersStendhal'srevivalof the dramatictheme of the woman who unknowingly eats her lover's heart when it has been removed and cooked by a jealous husband. The old topos is full of symbolism, principally that of perfect sacrificiallove, and was treated by a number of medieval writers. Stendhal refersexplicitlyto it in De l'amour and there are also allusionsin LeRouge et leNoir,which isof coursea splendidanachronism.Di Maio alsoconsidersStendhal's returnto another old Italian theme, that of young women forced to become nuns, and she agreeswith Croce that his manuscriptsourcesdo not have much historical authenticity. She reminds us that the novelist had the good taste to reduce the bizarreand sadisticelement in these old accountsof cruelconvents and randynuns. Her book is a useful synthesis of the main critical writings inspired by Stendhal's shortItalianstories. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL RICHARD BOLSTER HonoredeBalzac. Memoirede la critique. Ed. by STEPHANE VACHON. Paris: Presses de l'Universit6de Paris-Sorbonne. 1999. 560 pp. g99 F. Given the recent bicentenary of Balzac's birth and the I5oth anniversaryof his death, it is appropriate that reprints of notable if somewhat arbitrarilyselected critiquesof Balzac (Ambriere,Barberis,Lukacs,Mozet) should be followed by this collection of landmark critical texts that founded and forged what have become Balzac studies.As StephaneVachon showsin his introductory'cheminsde traverse' of 'l'tat de la critique',Balzac'sstatusas a latterdayHomer and as the fatherof the (modern) novel was being established well before his death, with both admirers (suchas Champfleury)and detractors(suchas Sainte-Beuve)drawingup the agenda of Balzac criticismforyearsto come: Balzac 'l'homme et l'oeuvre'(confirmedby the 1876 publication of the correspondence); Balzac between Romanticism and Realism;Balzac'sfrequentlyimpugned style;his morality/immorality;his religious and political conservatism/radicalism. Although much of Vachon's introductory materialwas covered in greaterdetail and depth by David Bellos in BalzacCriticism in France 1850-900o (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), it is useful to be reminded that whether enlistedbyjournalists,by emerging or establishedcritics,or by fellow novelists,Balzacwaslionized, 'manualized',politicized,andfinallymonumentalized with the inaugurationof Rodin's sculptureinJuly 1939.In the seeminglyinexorable stages so well charted by Bellos and, more recently, in Balzac,edited by Michael Tilby (London and New York:Longman, 1995),Balzac'sreputationwas made, his canonization assured. some of Stendhal'sfiction, with specialreferenceto the theme of claustrationin the Italian stories. Mariella Di Maio suggests that the final isolation of several protagonistsreflectsan unconscious Stendhalianwish to abolish the outsideworld. In 'Russie, melancolie' she argues that the hardship experienced in the Russian campaign was one of the important factors confirming Stendhal in his literary vocation. The majorpart of her book concerns itselfwith the Italianstories,and this is the most interestingsection. Di Maio compares Stendhal'streatment of the tragic real events of the Cenci storywith those of Artaudand Moravia.The latterwas closerto historicalfact, she explains, as in his version Beatrice was not raped by her father before she killed him. She reminds us that Stendhal was attractedto the character of Beatrice because of her energy. Other chapters deal with Stendhal's use of manuscriptsourcesin La Chartreuse deParme and his lifelong admirationfor Tasso, a sensitive, imaginative, and excessive individual with whom he felt much affinity. The section on 'Lecoeurmange' considersStendhal'srevivalof the dramatictheme of the woman who unknowingly eats her lover's heart when it has been removed...

Effects of Adding an Italian Theme to a Restaurant on the Perceived Ethnicity, Acceptability, and Selection of Foods

We investigated whether a change in the perceived ethnicity of a food can be produced without manipulating the food item itself, and if that change in ethnic perception is accompanied by a change in acceptability and food selection behavior. Italian and British foods were offered in a British restaurant for four days. Foods were offered for 2 days under control conditions, when the restaurant was decorated as usual. The identical foods then were offered in the restaurant for 2 more days under experimental conditions, when ethnic names were used on the menu to describe foods, and the restaurant was decorated with an Italian theme. Perceived ethnicity and acceptability of items were rated by customers each day, and item selection was tracked. The Italian theme increased selection of pasta and dessert items, and decreased the selection of fish. The Italian theme also increased the perceived Italian ethnicity of British pasta items, fish and veal, and increased the perceived Italian ethnicity of the meal overall. These findings show that changes in perceived ethnicity and food selection can be accomplished without altering food items, but merely by manipulating the environment, and may imply a unique strategy for increasing perceived menu variety.

Les thèmes italiens dans la poésie de Mihail Kuzmin : L'Italie comme théâtre de la mémoire

Anastasia Pasquinelli, Italian themes in the poetry of Mikhail Kuzmin : Italy's role as memory theater. A trip of 1895 to the Levant and, after that, a short but very important voyage to Italy, in the spring of 1 897, stamped their mark on all the future literary production of M. Kuzmin. The Hellenistic culture with which he was already imbued, allowed him to discover in Rome the blending of the pagan civilization with the paleo-Christian culture and, in Florence, the neo- Platonic and hermetic trends of the period of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Throughout the work of Kuzmin, formed in the school of Italian Renaissance — which is based on the tradition of memory art and originated the memory theater as imagination space — Italy remains always an inexhaustible source of creativity.

An artist's advertisement: The memoirs of James E. Freeman

Abstract Serious travellers like serious pleasures, and nothing gratifies them more than entertainment disguised as education. Visitors to Rome and Florence in the midnineteenth century justified many an idle hour spent browsing in a bookshop by the purchase of a novel or a volume of poetry with an irreproachably Italian theme. If prepared to linger a little longer, they could enjoy the selection of some suitable illustrations from photographs on display in the same establishment. The prints were then tipped-in by hand at appropriate places in the text, and a binding to suit the client's purse was picked to add the finishing touch. In due course the customer took home his own custom-built copy of a current favourite.1

The Original Della Cruscans and the Florence Miscellany

T HE DELLA CRUSCANS were damned by nineteenth-century critics to a contemptuous footnote in the history of Romanticism as a particularly affected and silly group of sentimental versifiers who were annihilated by William Gifford's satires, the Baviad (I79I) and Maeviad (1794). Until recently the judgment has not been questioned. Most modern scholars who have had to deal with the Cruscans have been content to accept the findings of their nineteenth-century predecessors, who in turn appear to have taken their information and evaluation of the group from Gifford himself. There is an amusing irony about this for, in general, critics of romanticism have little use for Gifford's judgment, primarily because of the part he played as editor of the Quarterly Review in the attacks on Keats and Shelley; yet the grounds and methods of attack on the Cruscans and on Keats were much the same. An interesting minor question of literary history is, why have the Cruscans been so unanimously sacrificed as scapegoats. After all, they were thoroughgoing Romanticists and, one would think, deserved at least the same right as Keats to an independent investigation of Gifford's charges. It remained for Roderick Marshall to point out in 1934 that there were really two groups of Cruscans: the contributors to the Florence Miscellany in 1785, and the contributors to the correspondence in the World beginning in I 787.2 Robert Merry as Della Crusca was a leader in both groups, but otherwise the members of the first group had almost nothing to do with the second. Mr. Marshall has called the Miscellany probably the most important book of poetry on Italian themes to appear in the eighteenth century.3