Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Origins and Duecento
- The Trecento
- The Quattrocento
- The Cinquecento
- The Seicento: Poetry, Philosophy and Science
- Narrative prose and theatre
- The Settecento
- The Age of Romanticism (1800–1870)
- 27 The Romantic controversy
- 28 Monti
- 29 Foscolo
- 30 Leopardi
- 31 Manzoni and the novel
- 32 Other novelists and poets of the Risorgimento
- 33 Opera since 1800
- The Literature of United Italy (1870–1910)
- The Rise and Fall of Fascism (1910–45)
- The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945–56)
- Contemporary Italy (since 1956)
- Bibliography
- References
27 - The Romantic controversy
from The Age of Romanticism (1800–1870)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Origins and Duecento
- The Trecento
- The Quattrocento
- The Cinquecento
- The Seicento: Poetry, Philosophy and Science
- Narrative prose and theatre
- The Settecento
- The Age of Romanticism (1800–1870)
- 27 The Romantic controversy
- 28 Monti
- 29 Foscolo
- 30 Leopardi
- 31 Manzoni and the novel
- 32 Other novelists and poets of the Risorgimento
- 33 Opera since 1800
- The Literature of United Italy (1870–1910)
- The Rise and Fall of Fascism (1910–45)
- The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945–56)
- Contemporary Italy (since 1956)
- Bibliography
- References
Summary
Writers and cultural policy
In January 1816 the Milan journal Biblioteca italiana published an article Sulla maniera e l'utilà delle traduzioni ('On the manner and usefulness of translations'), suggesting that Italian writers would benefit from a knowledge of foreign literature. This apparently unexceptional proposition triggered off a fiery debate which raged on and off for a long time, eventually outliving its own usefulness,and is emblematic of the whole period this chapter attempts to survey. Napoleon's invasion of Italy in 1796 and his eventual conquest of the peninsula had led to the establishment of a Kingdom of Italy in the north of the country which was seen by many patriots as a first step towards national unity and independence. With the collapse of the Kingdom in 1814 Milan, the capital of Lombardy, had returned under Austrian domination. It was without doubt the most advanced city in the most developed area of a woefully underdeveloped country. The Austrian plenipotentiary, Count Josef Heinrich von Bellegarde, soon realised that, besides the old aristocracy, traditional supporters of the Habsburgs who had ennobled their ancestors, he might also enlist the support of many radical intellectuals sorely disappointed by Napoleonic totalitarianism, who therefore would not appear as stooges of the new government. Among these were the doyen of Italian poets, Vincenzo Monti, then aged sixty-three; Pietro Giordani (1774–1848), who had become well known eight years earlier for his Panegirico di Napoleone legislatore (‘Panegyric of Napoleon the Law-giver’), and the geologist Scipione Breislak (1750–1826).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Italian Literature , pp. 397 - 405Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997