Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Italian Romanticism does not exist” declaimed Gina Martegiani (1908) , postulating a Voltarian critique that the literary movement was neither Italian nor Romantic. In extrapolating the conclusions of Arturo Graf's and Giuseppe Antonio Borgese's seminal studies, Martegiani argued that nineteenth-century Italian literature was a coherent by-product of Enlightenment culture, devoid of European Romanticism's aesthetics and idealist philosophy. Given its diverse and somewhat contradictory manifestations, the temptation to deny the existence of an Italian Romanticism continues to exert a certain fascination for literary historians. As they reject the solace of grand narratives in favor of discontinuous microhistories, these critics challenge the possibility of establishing a history of “isms” that does not embed political and cultural values into the concepts of periodicity and canonization and thereby marginalize other literary production. To dismiss Romanticism as convenient shorthand for historiographers, however, is to ignore the cultural context of early nineteenth-century literary production. This chapter traces the historical development of Romanticism in Italy as a self-conscious, if not entirely consistent, manifestation of evolving sensibilities while acknowledging both its intellectual debt and its aesthetic innovations with respect to European culture. Italian Romanticism's ... log in or subscribe to read full text