Nineteenth-century Italy Research Articles

Book Review: Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera, and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond by Katharine Mitchell

Book Review: <i>Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera, and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond</i> by Katharine Mitchell

'Who can tell me what potable water means?' The assessment of water quality in debates over hydraulic infrastructure in nineteenth-century Italy.

How water is perceived and represented has an impact on the relationships between a given society and its water infrastructure. Historians have identified a shift in the perception of water during the nineteenth century, which was connected to the development of chemistry. From an understanding based in Hippocratic medicine and natural history that treated it as an infinite variety of substances, water eventually became understood as a simple compound consisting of oxygen and hydrogen. This resulted in the abstraction of water from its social and environmental contexts, with consequences for the way water was managed. This article aims to demonstrate that such a view gives a mistaken intellectual coherence to a fragmented and conflicted process, which involved continuities, an adaptation of old frameworks to new social priorities, and fine changes in scientific thinking and practices. This paper examines the scientific and political debates concerning water infrastructure, surveys and analyses on water quality, medical reports and political measures in nineteenth-century Italy. Ultimately, the reduction of 'waters' to 'water' in Italy was more about determining who had the authority to assess water quality in the process of creating and stabilizing new power relations between the public and the private spheres than about the abstraction of water from its social and environmental contexts.

Unequal unification? Income inequality and unification in nineteenth century Italy and Germany

This research provides a comprehensive study of the linkages between institutional structures, balance of power between core and peripheries, endogenous extractive policies and inequality in the context of nineteenth century unification of Germany and Italy. To conduct this analysis, the study puts forward estimates of income inequality for pre-unification German states using social tables, compiled using primary data, some of which have thus far been unexplored in economic research. The findings suggest that the power balance between core and periphery, systems of government as well as distorted policies contributed to differences between the Italian and German experiences, specifically to the rise of inequality in the former and no marked increase in the latter.

Rhyming Jewish: Secular Jewish poetry in nineteenth-century Italy

Poetry has always played a fundamental role in Italian Jewish culture. From the Middle Ages on, there has been an uninterrupted production of poems. In spite of its relevance, variety, and long timespan, however, academic attention on Italian Jewish poetry has not been abundant and has mostly focused on a few characters and themes: medieval piyyut, the medieval poet Immanuel of Rome, and the Renaissance. Mirroring a general trend of Italian Jewish historiography and literary studies, which have so far mainly focused on the Renaissance and the twentieth century, nineteenth-century Italian Jewish poetry has almost been left out of the picture. This paper wishes to offer a contribution that may help fill this gap, by presenting three rather different Italian Jewish poets, spanning the long nineteenth century: Rachel Morpurgo (1790-1871), David Levi (1816-1898), and Crescenzo Del Monte (1868-1935). The purpose of this paper is to offer a portrait of nineteenth-century Italian Jewish poetry, focusing on its secular manifestations and catching the opportunity for some reflections on the definition of secular Jewish canon.

Venice's Amazon? Giustina Renier Michiel's Strategic Accommodation of Occupying Forces

Abstract: Giustina Renier Michiel, one of the most prolific female authors of early nineteenth-century Italy, is often remembered and celebrated as a Venetian patriot. During her lifetime, however, her literary identity was neither singular nor completely cohesive. Indeed, reading her manuscript writing alongside her more famous publications (including her history of Venetian festivals) illustrates the delicate balance Italian authors needed to maintain in order to ensure their continued literary success in a period marked by multiple and rapid regime changes. While obliged to work within the power structures established by their new political overlords, they nonetheless needed to remain sensitive to the tastes of Italian readers, who were subjected to the political occupation of their territory. Renier Michiel's experience demonstrates how it was possible to balance patriotism, political deference, and professional self-promotion with the goal of establishing a lasting cultural legacy.

‘Translating’ Valperga: A Journey Through Mary Shelley’s Italy

ABSTRACT This essay addresses how the manifold Italianness of Mary Shelley’s Valperga informs our translation of the novel into Italian. Valperga narrates – and in part fictionalizes, especially through its female figures – Italian Medieval history, based on the author’s wide-ranging and scrupulous research into multiple historiographical sources from Machiavelli to Muratori to Villani. It also engages with the Italian cultural and political scene of Shelley’s own time. The novel was composed between the revolutionary moti of 1820–21 and the later Risorgimento, and powerfully reflects the troubled political climate of the age. Valperga draws on Shelley’s experience of living in early nineteenth-century Italy, as well as on her reading knowledge of Italian, a language that she was successfully endeavouring to learn to speak at the time. There is therefore a special appropriateness, and also a special responsibility, in translating the novel into the language and culture that played such an important role in its formation. This essay provides significant examples of the challenges involved in the translation process.

Policing the Sicilian Mafia: Repression and Control of the Mafia Phenomenon in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

The article analyzes the repression of the Mafia phenomenon in Sicily between 1896 and 1901. The close attention paid to the Mafia by the authorities during this period produced a strong evidence base which this article examines through the lens of policing practices. These practices remain neglected as to date the historiography has focused on tracing legal developments rather than examining the application of laws by the forces of law and order. Accordingly, the article puts forward a series of historiographically important questions: what was the attitude of police forces in controlling dangerous individuals? How much do the practices adopted by police forces tell us about the possibilities for state intervention and the limits of its influence? What was the relationship between the perception of a criminal threat, police operations and the construction of judicial truth? The article reveals a very clear image of the Italian state in the liberal era. In fact, state officials and high-ranking institutional figures seemed interested in strengthening the social and political order by establishing control networks which could operate in any circumstances. They aimed to make it impossible not to interact with state officials. In this sense, rather than seeking a complete monopoly of violence, they aimed to oblige local power holders, social groups and semi-public figures to bargain with state officials. The effect was that social groups with means of violence at their disposal did not necessarily become a threat to the maintenance of order and nor did they necessarily forestall the possibility of state mediation and hegemony.

‘Garibaldi was here?!’: Commemorative monuments and the emergence of a national memory culture in nineteenth-century Italy – a network approach

With the help of a database of historical-national monuments, the article will look at monuments' mediating function between the commemorated personalities and the locations of their commemorative presence. An analysis of this dataset offers a new way of studying the relationship between national and regional layers of collective memory. Italy offers an excellent test case to explore the possibilities of this data-driven methodology. The unification of a nationally Italian collective memory corresponds directly with the unification of the Italian state out of the pre-existing, old historical regions with their own, well-established historical consciousness. While a national memory culture becomes apparent in the late nineteenth century, public monuments remain predominantly local/regional in orientation, with only a few memory figures (especially Garibaldi) commemorated on a truly national scale.

Strategie di divulgazione scientifica e nation building nel primo Ottocento

Abstract The history of popular science in early nineteenth-century Italy constitutes a broad but little investigated research field. This article aims to explore the topic from the viewpoint of the pre-unitarian authors who contributed to the growth of this publishing sector. To shed light on the relationship between their narrative strategies and the nation-building process, it focuses on a major case study: the analysis of the role played by unexpected events in several travel memoirs written by Francesco Cusani Confalonieri, a historian, publisher and Lombard patriot (1802–1879). To capture the attention of the reader, and determined to both delight and instruct, the author resorted in two instances to the device of self-narration, based on his travel journals. In 1838, he published „Remembrances of a Trip in Bavaria, Saxony and Prussia“ in a periodical that he had established for young people entitled „Historical and Picturesque Museum for the Youth“. Later, between 1846 and 1847, he printed his first original work, addressed to an adult audience: „Historical and Statistical Memoirs“ of Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands and Greece, countries that he had visited in 1840. By examining the ways in which order and disorder were integrated into these two texts, the study underlines the connection between Cusani’s narrative choices and his cultural objectives, also thanks to research on his personal letters, hitherto untouched. It thus shows that, through the writing process, the unexpected events encountered by the narrator during his trips underwent a transformation: from constitutive aspects of the scientific experience to romantic elements that the writer deemed crucial to earn the favour of his readers and convey to them new historic-geographical knowledge as well as a vision of the world in line with his liberal ideals.

Performing Ot(h)ello: Verdi, Salvini and the Stage Manual

AbstractThis article retraces Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) to the great Italian mattatori (star actors), particularly Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915), whose ground-breaking performances of the Moor of Venice, in a translation by Giulio Carcano, coincided with the time when Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, were collaborating on their Otello. The grandi attori enjoyed a reputation for realistic immediacy and impulsiveness readily associated with cultural stereotypes about Italy's perceived ‘otherness’. In the ethnographic context of nineteenth-century Italy, it is argued here that the actors’ interpretation of Shakespeare's Moor not only synthesised the multilateral cultural threads of the Jacobean Othello, but also partnered this racial alterity with a new dramatic language, which went on to influence Verdi's opera and prompt book, and, ultimately, to perpetuate an exoticised ‘brand’ of Italian artistic culture on stage at a time when Italy was fashioning its own national identity.

Waiting for Verdi: Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815–1848 Mary Ann Smart

<i>Waiting for Verdi: Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815–1848</i> Mary Ann Smart

Unequal Unification? Income Inequality and Unification in Nineteenth Century Italy and Germany

Unequal Unification? Income Inequality and Unification in Nineteenth Century Italy and Germany

Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints

Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints

Aleramo’s Una donna via Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

This article provides a detailed comparison of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) and Sibilla Aleramo's novel Una donna (1906), focussing specifically on the similar endings of both works where the respective protagonist walks out on her family. It begins by examining the various contexts and collaborative networks that enabled the theatre of Ibsen to travel into late nineteenth-century Italy, namely Luigi Capuana's translation of the play, Casa di bambola, and early interpretations of the lead role by Italy's star actress, Eleonora Duse. The article proceeds to offer a close reading of Casa di bambola and Una donna, elucidating how Aleramo's first-person novel is able to expand on key issues which are only dealt with briefly in Ibsen's play. In so doing, the analysis illustrates what it was about Aleramo's narrative technique which both aligns her with, but also sets her apart from, her predecessor, shedding new light on the connective associations between the two authors.

English-Language Periodicals and Reading Rooms in Nineteenth-Century Italy as Spaces of Intercultural Contact and Exchange

This paper discusses the symbiotic relationship that developed between English-language periodicals published in Italy and major reading rooms in Rome and Florence. This relationship took various configurations – from Luigi Piale in Rome, who opened a reading room and published the weekly The Roman Advertiser, to the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence that provided access to the many English-language periodicals published in Italy – and created important spaces of transnational cultural interaction. The paper looks at the cultural practices and the forms of sociability represented by the reading of periodicals and the patronizing of reading rooms as ‘imported traditions’ brought to Italy by the many British cultured travellers and residents in the nineteenth century. It identifies the actors who promoted these cultural practices (editors, librarians, cosmopolitan intellectuals) and analyses their role as mediating figures who created in-between spaces where cross-cultural exchanges unfolded. The paper also discusses the broader transnational cultural dynamic at work as those cultural practices imported from England favoured a greater engagement of British visitors and expatriates with the Italian political and cultural environment.

Open Houses from Etic to Emic Perspectives: Casa Aperta in Early-Modern and Nineteenth-Century Italy

What did early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians mean when they used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta, literally to keep open house and to have an open house? In this article I will try to answer this question, which is far less trivial than one might imagine. Before tackling the topic, a premise is necessary. In some previous works, I used an etic category of ‘open houses’, i.e. a category I elaborated to interpret the implications of the presence, in many households, of domestic staff from different classes, places, races than their masters/employers. Such a presence made those houses open. The border between different peoples and cultures was inside the houses themselves that were places of exchanges, confrontations and clashes. In this article, I will develop a different approach: I will map the emic uses of the ‘open-house’ category, i.e. I will analyse how early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta. While some uses had to do with hospitality and sociability, others had legal meanings, referring to citizenship rights and privileges, the status of aristocrats, the differences between foreigners and local people and taxpaying. I will pay particular attention to the latter, also suggesting possible geographical differences and changes over time. This will present an opportunity to delve into the cultural and legal world of early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians, and to unveil the importance of houses for one's status.

Accounting and music: The role of Giuseppe Verdi in shaping the nineteenth-century culture industry

The aim of this research is to investigate the contribution of Giuseppe Verdi and Casa Ricordi in shaping the nineteenth-century music culture industry by adopting a new perspective on accounting and history. In nineteenth-century Italy, opera represented an important phenomenon, both artistically and socially, playing a fundamental role of intermediary between society and the political sphere. The complex relationships between the composer (artist) and the publisher (cultural intermediary) are analysed in the specific field of opera music, outlining the evolution and interweaving of artistic, social and economic aspects. The study embraces the period 1839–1893 and examines the economic and private relations between Giuseppe Verdi and Casa Ricordi and their impacts on the culture industry to this day. This article’s novelty is to adopt a historical perspective to broaden accounting into the field of high music offering possibilities for further studies.

“Most of Them are Honourable”. Luigi Villari and the Armenians during the 1905-1906 Armenian-Tatar War

Luigi Villari’s book Fire and Sword in the Caucasus, published in London in 1906, is widely quoted by scholars working on the history of Transcaucasia, in particular in respect to the Armenian-Tatar war. Yet neither this text nor its author have been so far studied in detail. The Italian Luigi Villari (1876-1959) is a figure of considerable interest; he was a diplomat, traveler, and journalist. His father, Pasquale Villari (1827-1917), was an accomplished historian and politician who played an important role in nineteenth-century Italy; Villari’s mother was the British writer Linda White (1836-1915). It is remarkable that the author wrote a book an English at a time when this was not a popular language in Italy. He wrote extensively both in English and Italian about different topics, mainly related to history and international politics. It has been shown that, after the First World War, Villari joined Fascism and contributed actively to the regime’s propaganda in Great Britain. The present paper examines Luigi Villari’s book on the Caucasus, especially the author’s attitude towards the Armenians. I shall demonstrate that in his work, he handles negative stereotypes of the Armenians (“one of the most unpopular races of the East”), which were common in the Russian empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, in a rather interesting way.

China and world history in Italian nineteenth century thought. Some remarks on Giuseppe Ferrari’s work

ABSTRACT La Chine et l ’ Europe by Giuseppe Ferrari, published in 1867, has for a long time not been considered one of the outstanding works of this eminent figure in the history of political thought of nineteenth-century Italy. In fact, his comparative view of the history of European and Chinese civilizations offers interesting suggestions in a perspective aiming to investigate the varieties of approaches to world history in the late nineteenth 5century. Based on a large amount of primary and secondary sources, notwithstanding the fact that Ferrari was not a Sinologist, it offers a parallel investigation on Chinese and European history opposed to the disparaging representations of Chinese politics and culture, widespread in the age of European imperialism. Avoiding, at the same time, a naïve Sinophile approach, Ferrari seeks instead a balance in which the varieties and comparability of civilizations, in a world context, stand as the basis of this original investigation.

The Social Foundations of Positivism: The Case of Late-Nineteenth-Century Italy

AbstractWhat social conditions produce positivism? One position, common to both positivists and some of their major critics, suggests that positivism is an “ideology” or “worldview” of industrial capitalism. Positivism therefore resonates with the basic experience of capitalism for all social groups. Intellectuals draw on this experience in formulating positivist social science. A second position suggests that positivism is a strategy of distinction by which intellectuals attempt to accumulate symbolic capital against their rivals. This position suggests that positivism is a resource for establishing a social science that imitates the methodology of natural science. Our article argues for a third view focused on the internal structure of the intelligentsia as a social group. Positivism could emerge in both industrial capitalist and preindustrial contexts; however, the types of positivism differ in these two cases because the structure of the intelligentsia differs. In preindustrial contexts, such as nineteenth-century Italy, which is the focus of our analysis, positivists claim an ontological continuity between natural and social sciences. In industrial contexts, on the basis of which most theories of positivism rest, positivists claim a methodological similarity between natural and social sciences. We conclude our analysis by reflecting on the implications of our study for work on positivism and social ontology in the social sciences.