MYTHMAKING IN THE
RISORGIMENTO
The adoption of Dante Alighieri in the Italian narrative
MA THESIS EUROPEAN STUDIES – IDENTITY AND INTEGRATION
Graduate School of Humanities Author: Jörn Sparrius - 6284744
University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Mw. Dr. Krisztina Lajosi
Table of Contents
Introduction p.3
Methodology and Structure p.4
Chapter 1 – Political background: Il Risorgimento p.7
Chapter 2 – The construction of the Italian national identity p.12 2.1 Mythic and heroic forces in the creation of a national identity p.12 2.2 Heroes and myths as cultural forces for the Risorgimento p.15
2.3 The myth of exile p.18
Chapter 3 – The mythical evolution of Dante Alighieri p.21
3.1 Introduction to Dante p.22
3.2 Foscolo’s Dante: ‘Il poeta-vate’ p.23
3.3 Byron's Dante: A romanticized conception p.26
3.4 Mazzini’s Dante: Politicization of a myth p.31
3.5 Conclusion p.34
Conclusions p.36
Introduction
“Italians had a right to feel at home anywhere in the peninsula, as much as an Englishman in England, a Dutchman in Holland and so on’’.1 This claim is anything but uncommon from a modern-day perspective. However, by the time that G.R. Carli expressed his ideas in 1765 in the Milanese journal Il Caffè, the concept of a collective Italian identity was regarded as revolutionary. The Italian peninsula had been politically divided since the Roman Empire, and existed of several independent states. Moreover, for centuries religion had been the predominant model of
identification. Under influence of the French Revolution, nationalism increasingly replaced religion as primary model of identification for the peoples. The nineteenth century saw an Italian national identity under construction, which gradually took shape under influence of cultural forces. The Risorgimento, as the process of unification is generally refered to, resulted eventually in the formation of an Italian nation-state in 1870. The idea of the existence of a pan Italian nation was given a political notion after a long and instensive process of unification.
It is remarkable that the sense of belonging to Italy manifested itself for the first time outside the borders of Italy. Exiles that left Italy created a sense of loss and belonging to the homeland. “Loss generates strong feelings of connection among those who share it”.2 During the
Risorgimento, a significant part of the Italian intellectual class was forced into exile after several failed revolutions. Over the course of the nineteenth century, a strong myth arose around the exile. Myths related to the Italian nation fostered the emergence of a collective Italian identity, and have played a central role in the Risorgimento. Italian intellectual patriots were exploring Italy’s history in order to identify the heroes who potentially could appeal to the nineteenth century Italians, and could become adopted in the Italian narrative.
Yet in the beginning of the century, patriots as Ugo Foscolo dedicated literary works to Dante Alighieri, the great thirteenth century poet. As Dante was before the nineteenth century mostly renowned for his poetic legacy, the notion of the poet changed fundamentally over the course of the Risorgimento. Italian patriots increasingly appropriated the poet, and used his legacy as means of Risorgimento propaganda. In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate how Dante was
effectively shaped according to the spirit of the age. In doing so, I will seek to find an answer to the question: ‘In what ways was Dante Alighieri successfully adopted into the Italian national
narrative?’ In order to adopt Dante into the Italian narrative, patriots were seeking for ways to make Dante’s poetry accessible to the public. I will argue that Dante’s history of exile has played a significant role in this process.
1 D. Beales and E. Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, London: Routledge 2002, p.69. 2 D.R., Gabaccia Italy’s many Diasporas, Washington: Washington University 2000. p.6.
It is my intention to underline that nationalism is a product of modernity. Nations and national identities are constructed around invented traditions. Traditions which are mostly invented or reinvented according to the spirit of the nineteenth century, in order to foster the establishment of nation-states. These cultural traditions certainly did have (and still have) their value in binding the nation together. However, people assume too often that culture has a natural basis, something that has always been part of their society. With the current rise of nationalism all over the world, people increasingly tend to apply this misconception in a wrong way. It is important to recognize the political force of culture, and to emphasize the invented origins of traditions, in order to protect the world against xenophobia, racism and a heavily polorized society.
Methodology and Structure
This thesis elaborates on the cultural forces which shaped the Italian national narrative, and eventually could lead to the political unification of the Italian peninsula. As will be argued,
mythical figures have traditionally been determining the cultural and political identity of particular societies.3 In Italy, a myth around poet Dante Alighieri evolved during the nineteenth century into one of the most powerful myths of the Risorgimento. The case study will map the transformation process of Dante as historical figure into a foundational Risorgimento myth in detail. The general objective of the case study is to demonstrate the potential of a myth as political instrument in the construction of a national identity.
At first, the most important developments in Italy’s political unification process will be outlined. Whereas many national unification narratives are centered on the battle against the foreign aggressor, the main challenge of the Risorgimento must be found in the unification of the strongly divided states of the Italian peninsula. The background chapter functions to illustrate the long and complex process of the Risorgimento, in which disillusion alternated with enthusiasm. Once the political circumstances of the Risorgimento have become clear, the analysis of the underlying cultural forces can carried out. These cultural forces bound the people in the various Italian states together, defined what it meant to be Italian, and eventually even accounted for the political unification of Italy. Culture can be regarded as the engine for the political unification.
The analysis is built upon two key insights. First, Pierre Nora connects the idea of a collective memory to the creation of a national identity. Whereas individual memories are
determined by personal memories, the memory of the collective is determined by the concept of the lieux de mémoire’. Lieux de memoire, or memory sites, are fundamental in the communication of
3 J. Leerssen and M. Beller, Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a
the nation’s past. Eric Hobsbawn explains in The Invention of Tradition that these memory sites, in the form of reinvented traditions, are often presented as being very old, but mostly are recently invented. The central idea is that these traditions are used to foster national identity and create national unity.4 This thesis follows the modernist approach to the construction of a nation’s identity, taken by both Nora and Hobsbawn. The modernist approach focuses on the role of political and intellectual actors in the process of the formation of a national identity, and considers the nation-state as a product of modernity.
Duncan S.A. Bell’s findings complete the theoretical framework. He regards the usual interpretation of the collective memory as the sum of all individual memories as too simple. Bell opts (just like Nora) for an addition to the definition of the concept, and distinguishes between myths and memory since memory and mythology can act in opposition to each other. A nationalist myth can be conceived as transcending the individual memory and simplifying and dramatizing a national story. The theories of Hobsbawm, Nora and Bell combined lead to the essential insight that intellectuals can effectively re-negotiate history and manipulate a national identity by the
construction of a strong myth.
The second part of the thesis will be dedicated to the exploration of the Italian mythscape, following the principles from the theoretical framework. The subject will be narrowed down from the evaluation of Italy’s heroes and myths to the invention of the most influential foundational myth of the Risorgimento: the myth around Dante Alighieri. The analysis of the Italian mythscape will identify a second strong myth that has been used effectively by Risorgimento politicians to promote the myth of Dante: the myth of exile. I will demonstrate that this myth has been fundamental in the definitive adoption of Dante in the Italian national narrative.
The third chapter contains the case study. The case study incorporates all the previously provided findings, which are used to analyze the evolution of Dante from literary greatness into a politicized mythical creation. The case study starts off with an introduction to Dante the medieval poet. The factual representation of Dante’s life and legacy is included in the thesis to contrast it with the nineteenth century adoption of Dante in the Italian national narrative.
To effectively project the process of Dante’s adoption in the Italian narrative, I choose to analyze the representations of Dante in the literary works of three different Risorgimento authors. All the authors had a fundamental impact on the Risorgimento and on the appropriation of Dante as foundational myth. There can be distinguished between the early adopter Foscolo, Byron as
exponent for the essential Romantic period, and Mazzini as political adopter of Dante. The
4E.,J., Hobsbawm and T.,O., Ranger, The invention of Tradition, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press,
representations of Dante in primary sources Dei Sepolcri, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Dell’amor Patrio di Dante provide a detailed overview of the adoption of Dante in the Italian national narrative, arguing that the myth of exile played an essential role in this process. The primary nineteenth century sources are analyzed with help of secondary sources.
Literary studies approach the work of Dante from a literary perspective and focus on the poetic and linguistic legacy of Dante. In these particular studies, Dante is foremost represented as father of Italian literature. The focus in the literature studies lies on the thirteenth century texts of the poet. In this thesis I choose to focus mainly on the nineteenth century appropriation of Dante, since I approach the poet from a cultural-historical perspective. Seen from this angle, the aspect of Dante’s experience of exile seems to be an important factor for nineteenth century intellectuals in order to adopt the medieval poet in the Italian narrative.
Chapter 1 – Political background: Il Risorgimento
The Italian state as it is referred to today exist as a nation-state only since 1870, when Rome and the whole region of Lazio completed the political unification of the Italian peninsula. The movement that eventually led to the political unification of Italy is generally known as the Risorgimento, which literally means resurrection. Alberto Mario Banti defines the Risorgimento as ''un processo politico-culturale che si fonda sull'idea di nazione e che ha come scopo la costruzione di uno stato italiano''.5 The explicit link between culture and politics in relation to the construction of the Italian state points out that the political unification of Italy went hand in hand with the invention of Italian culture in the nineteenth century. Political unity could only be established by gaining the support of the nation for the Italian unification. The best way to generate this support was to engage the nation by shaping an Italian cultural identity, cultural traditions defined what it meant to be Italian. The invention of Italian myths and heroes has been of essential importance in this process, as will be elaborated on later. But first the bigger political developments that led to the unification need to be outlined, in order to be able to assess afterwards the cultural forces that were the motors behind this process and gave the country its character. The narrative of the Risorgimento, as will be shown, cannot simply be presented as a battle against foreign aggressors in order to liberate the country. It occurred foremost as a struggle to obtain unity within the country itself.
Despite the fact that the Italian peninsula had been a politically divided area from the fall of the Roman Empire until far in the nineteenth century, there did exist a sense of Italianità long before the Risorgimento started. But the political notion was most frequently absent before the nineteenth century, and if there was any, it was rather vague and related to the dominance of one existing source of secular or religious power.6 And then again, these ideas were only shared by a limited group of intellectuals, expressed in Italian literature and poetry. It was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the sense of belonging to a homeland became slowly more concrete.
The determination of the exact moment or event that initiated the Risorgimento remains disputable, as is often the case with long-term processes. Nevertheless, a defining moment for the general political thinking in terms of nations and nation-states has been the French Revolution. The revolution raised the political consciousness of nations all over the continent, a development that shaped a new political era of nationalism. This new wave of self-determination that spread all over the continent concurred in Italy with Napoleon's invasion of the country in 1796 during the
5 A., M., Banti, Il Risorgimento Italiano, Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza 2004, p.11.
Revolutionary wars. Initially, Italian intellectuals supported the French invasion heavily in order to be liberated from the anciens régimes (plural in the case of the many monarchs and rulers in Italy).7 They welcomed the prospected modernization and the ideals of the French Revolution, but as appeared in practice, the intention of the French was to pursue their own economic and political interests. ''The Italian 'patriots' who had welcomed the French with open arms could be portrayed as betrayers of the Italian people, of Italian culture and of the emerging Italian nation''.8 Although the invasion of Napoleon was a disappointment for many Italians, it affected Italian society in two different ways. The French brought about fundamental innovations in terms of bureaucracy and organization, and moreover, the invasion caused a rise of patriotic feelings among the Italian people. This can be illustrated by the emergence of the various patriotic novels in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Although still limited in scope, there existed a sense of Italian identity after the defeat of Napoleon. These national sentiments yet had to be converted into political unity. The restoration in 1815 meant a return to the old political situation as it was before the Napoleonic period. The outcome of the Congress of Vienna brought the most prosperous parts of Italy (Lombardy,Venetia, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna) under the rule of the Austrian Empire. ''Although opposition to the Restoration in northern Italy was almost universal among the educated, the educated remained a tiny minority of the population and hostility to foreign rule was the only unifying factor: ex-giacobini, ex-Bonapartists, supporters of the Papacy's temporal power, romantics and rationalists could not possibly agree on any positive program of action, let alone a political strategy''.9 This confirms again the big division among the Italian population, as well as the prevailing differences between the élite and the rest of the country. Italy was in the need of binding traditions, but the Austrian oppression made it difficult or even dangerous for patriots to express political ideals.10 Dissatisfaction with the ruling classes increased, given the rise of political uprisings in various parts of the country. The insurrections against the oppressive monarchs and empires occurred in Naples but as well in northern parts of the country (Genoa and Savoy) in the beginning of the 1820s. These insurrections were organized and executed inevitably by secret societies, considering the firm suppression of the authorities. These societies were organized without a single clear objective, but rebelled in general against the power of authorities, strove for lower taxes, or personal freedom.11 The Carbonari movement is known as the leading underground movement in
7 G.., Bedani and B.,Haddock, The politics of Italian national identity: A multidisciplinary perspective. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2000, p.12.
8 Ibid., p.13.
9 R., Absalom Italy since 1800, a nation in balance?, London: Routledge 1995, p.18.
10 G.., Bedani and B.,Haddock, The politics of Italian national identity: A multidisciplinary perspective. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2000, p.23.
Italy. ''Until Mazzini arrived with a more positive patriotic doctrine, carbonarism was a focus of discontents which undermined loyalty to the restored monarchies after 1815''.12
The young carbonaro Giuseppe Mazzini would over the course of the century grow into one of the key figures of the Risorgimento. Mazzini's influence was yet in the '30s already significant. He played a fundamental role in the organization of the '31 series of revolts in Central Italy, led by the Carbonari. ''He was the first person to put forward a specifically Italian, national revolutionary program''. In doing so, he turned himself directly to the people instead of just addressing the
intellectual élite, by spreading a consistent and comprehensible message of a democratic republican Italian state. Mazzini interweaved politics with religion, by approaching the nation as a faith, and regarded it as the will of God that the Italian states would unite. However, there must be noticed that the prospects of radical liberal change were still limited in Italy in the 1830s.13 Mazzini spent most of his life in exile, just as many of his revolutionary contemporaries. The most important contributions of Mazzini and his in 1831 established revolutionary movement Young Italy must be found in the shift that slowly occurred in people's minds concerning the liberal notion of a Pan-Italian republic. Also international circumstances need to be taken into account here, since the successful French liberal revolution of 1830 contributed to the wave of liberalism that slowly took over Europe in the nineteenth century.
Although the idea of a united Italy had gained more approval by the 40s, the citizens and politicians lacked consensus on how to reach this unity. Furthermore, there existed ambiguity about the political shape of the still to be formed Italian state. The liberal Catholic Vincenzo Gioberti opted in his neo-Guelph proposal (neo-Guelph is related to a religious group (the Guelph’s) which advocated for more political power to the Church) Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (published in 1843) for a confederal union of Italian states, led by the Pope and Piedmont.14 Gioberti saw an important role for the Church in leading the country. Piedmont was the only significant military power of the Italian peninsula. Gioberti’s ideas were supported by a relatively big part of the Italian society; especially the élite praised the vision of the liberal Catholic.
Cesare Balbo and Massimo d’Azeglio reacted on Gioberti by criticizing his neo-Guelph theories. Balbo and d'Azeglio can be classified as moderates, just as Gioberti. Moderates positioned themselves somewhere in the middle of Mazzini's revolutionary ideas and the conservatism of the old régimes. They can be regarded as pro nationalists, however the idea of political change did not appeal to the moderates. Both d'Azeglio as Balbo were against unification. Balbo advocated a role for a European balance of power, whereas d'Azeglio opted for a non-violent approach.
12 Ibid., p.37.
13 G.., Bedani and B.,Haddock, The politics of Italian national identity: A multidisciplinary perspective. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2000, p.32.
The period 1848-1870 can be regarded as the final chapter in the unification of Italy. The year 1848 was one of immense political upheaval all across Europe. The major liberal revolutions of ’48 were aimed at removing the established ruling class of monarchs, and brought about catalyzing effects. The very first revolution occurred in Palermo, and was directed against the suppressive government of Naples. People were unsatisfied with the rule of the aristocratic Bourbon dynasty, and opted for a Sicilian constitution plus economic and social reforms. The King asked the Austrian government for backing. But the Austrians were in a weak position since they faced several crises elsewhere, and refused military help.15 The constitution was declared by the end of January, and in the months afterwards the same occurred in multiple parts all over Italy. Sardinia and Tuscany followed soon with own constitutions. Not long afterwards, both the Austrian chancellor Metternich as the Pope were forced into exile. As the Pope had left Rome, a new liberal Roman republic was declared in February 1849. The Milanese revolution resulted in the withdrawal of Austria from northern Italy and their control over Italy further declined. Constitutions were declared all over the country and the revolutionary wave resulted throughout Europe in the beginning of a new democratic age.16
Despite the initial successes of the liberal revolutions, the circumstances changed in favor of the old régimes in 1849. Austrian forces were able to recover and eventually managed to retrieve their old influence in Italy, whereas a Catholic coalition battled against the new Roman liberal republic in order to restore the power of the Church. The young general of the army of the revolutionary Roman republic, Giuseppe Garibaldi, proved himself to be a successful military leader by defeating the armies of France and the Neapolitans.17 However, the Roman republic could not persist against the combined diplomatic and military forces of Austria and France. The
Kingdom of Sardinia was in fact the only state that was able to keep its independency. Although the revolutions had failed to result in political change, they did leave its traces on the Italian peninsula. The revolutions of ’48-’49 were supported by both the working class and the élite at the same time. Liberal sentiments had risen significantly among the population, in terms of identity the idea of ‘us’ and ‘the other’ began to play an increasingly important role in the minds of the Italians.
It was Camillo Benso di Cavour who realized that it was necessary to reduce the power of the Church, in order to foster the process of Italy’s democratization. Cavour played a crucial role for further development of the Risorgimento. He modernized the economy and managed to reduce the influence of the Church, but his supreme contribution to the Risorgimento must be found in the field of international diplomacy. “The important part played by Piedmont in the Crimea and Cavour’s presence at the Congress of Paris (1856) ensured that the ‘Italian Question’ was debated
15 D. Beales and E. Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, London: Routledge 2002, p.89. 16 Ibid., p.89.
by the European powers and confirmed Piedmont as an important player in European diplomacy”.18 Cavour had plans to engage Napoleon the third, the president of the French republic, in a war against Austria. The fact that this eventually happened, was due to an incident. Felice Orsini, an Italian revolutionary, attempted to assassinate the French president. Contradictory, Napoleon decided to intervene in Italy after this incident and assist Piedmont in their conflict with Austria. When Austria sent an ultimatum to France and Piedmont about the disarmament of Piedmont, it eventually came to a war in 1859. The whole of central-north Italy became the battlefield, and during the war, uprisings rose in Tuscany, Modena, Parma and the Romagna.19 Cavour offered Savoy and Nice to France, while referenda in different areas were held in order to decide about their political future. It led to the establishment of a North Italian Kingdom in 1860.
A decisive episode in the final phase of the Risorgimento was the expedition of Garibaldi with his Mille, referring to the thousand volunteers in the army of the general. Garibaldi left to Sicily in 1860 to conquer the South of the peninsula in order to achieve national unification. The Sicilians already rebelled against the Bourbon régime in April 1860 to fight for their independence. When Garibaldi arrived, the local political situation came to be seen from a national perspective. In May, Garibaldi's troops won the battle of Calatafimi in Sicily. They recruited local men to join the Mille and fight against the Bourbons. In August, Garibaldi had conquered Sicily and crossed the sea towards Calabria. On September the 7th the army reached Naples, and Garibaldi had the whole Southern part of Italy under his command. On the 21th of October, the population of the Kingdom of Sicily decided by means of a referendum that they were from that moment on part of the larger Kingdom of Sardinia, governed by Vittorio Emanuele.20 In 1861, the King declared Italy as a united Kingdom, however it would take until 1866 before Venice was added to the Kingdom, after the withdrawal of Austria from the lagoon. When the French troops were forced to fight in the French-Prussian war of 1870, the unification process was finished. After a long process, the Italian
peninsula was finally politically united.
18 A., Thompson, George Eliot and Italy, Literary, Cultural and Political influences from Dante to the Risorgimento, London: MacMillan Press 1998, p.119.
19 D. Beales and E. Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, London: Routledge 2002, p.119.
20 D.,M., Smith, Cavour and Garibaldi 1860: A Study in Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985, p.4.
Chapter 2 – The construction of the Italian national identity
The political unification of Italy was finally completed in 1871. The Italian peninsula had been a divided area since the fall of the Roman Empire. As demonstrated before, the path towards the eventual foundation of the Italian nation-state was long and tough. But what were the mobilizing cultural forces that bound the people of the strongly divided Italian states together defined the Italian national identity and eventually even accounted for the political unification of the strongly divided Italian states? First, there will be elaborated on cultural identity theories in order to
determine how culture is related to a national identity. Afterwards, myths are identified as effective invented traditions in order to construct a national identity. Myth and memory will be separated, to argue that myths can be identified as effective invented tradition in order to influence a nation’s identity. Whereas Italy lacked a political united history, the country did have a very rich tradition of literary heroes. As will be argued, a myth around the thirteenth century poet Dante Alighieri
evolved during the nineteenth century in one of the most powerful myths of the Risorgimento. The cause for this successful adoption in the Italian national narrative, as will be argued in the last paragraph, can partly be found in the promotion of a second strong myth; the myth of exile. 2.1 Mythic and heroic forces in the creation of a national identity
“The word ‘identity’ derives from Latin idem, ‘the same’, and fundamentally denotes a relationship expressing the sameness of a thing with itself, expressed logically in the formula A=A’’.21 An identity is the blueprint of one’s self. However, what needs to be noticed is that the A is variable over time. Identities are constructed and can mutate, depending on time and circumstances. But from what derives ones identity? “Memories help us make sense of the world we live in; and ‘memory work’ is, like any other kind of physical or mental labor, embedded in complex class, gender and power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten), by whom, and for what end’’.22 Group identities follow the same principles, and rely on a certain shared past. This shared past is dependent on memories and how these memories are subjectively interpreted/ canonized over time. This idea enlarged to the level of collective identities means that collective identities are determined by a shared history. However, history belongs to everyone as memory is strictly personal. This is an important distinction since the individual memory and the collective memory do function in different ways. The latter is not simply the sum of all individual memories in a nation. “History’s goal and ambition is not to exalt but to annihilate what in reality has taken
21 J. Leerssen and M. Beller, Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a
critical survey, New York: Rodopi, 2007, p.335.
place”.23 The concept of ‘lieux de mémoire’, (brought forward by Pierre Nora) has been important to understand the processes that determine a collective memory. “Memory sites, (often taken as physical locations, but also connoting discursive or representational commonplaces, such as figures, symbols or myths) are the focus of public acts of commemoration and recurring reference points in communications about the past. As such, they are powerful affirmations of a shared sense of identity”.24
However, collective memory had only a limited meaning before the beginning of the nineteenth century. Institutionalized memory was exclusively the domain of the church, the aristocracy and the monarchies.25 Religion was the most important model of identification, and in the absence of states and bureaucracy, the majority of the statues and monuments were dedicated to the church. ''With the rise of the modern centralized states after the French Revolution, the cult of remembrance and national permanence becomes a matter of state policy''.26 Intellectuals tried to construct a national identity by the use of culture in order to bind people together and foster the unification process of the nation-states. Whereas the collective identities are determined by shared history, the identity of the to be formed nation-states could become defined by the invention or reinvention of traditions, such as the creation of memory sites, described by Eric Hobsbawm in his 1983 The Invention of Tradition.27
Traditions that form the cultural identity of a nation can include national flags, celebrations, myths, heroes or other symbolic figures or anthems. The term 'cultural' already implies an artificial relationship with identity, since culture is learned behavior. ''We should not be misled by a curious, but understandable, paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of the novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so 'natural' as to require no definition of other than self-assertion.28'' Nationalism and the cultural identity of a nation have to be approached very carefully, and nationalists should be aware of the fact that the nation is a recent invention.
The paradox is also traceable in the Italian case, whereas it was not before the second half of the eighteenth century that Italians began to refer to Italy as their patria (homeland) instead of referring to cities or region's as place of belonging.29 Moreover, they claimed their Italian identity on the basis of their ancient Roman roots. But before applying Hobsbawm's theories to the Italian
23 P., Nora, ‘Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire’, Representations 26 (1989), p.9.
24 J. Leerssen and M. Beller, Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a
critical survey, New York: Rodopi, 2007, p.360.
25 J., Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p.6. 26 J. Leerssen and M. Beller, Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a
critical survey, New York: Rodopi, 2007, p.336..
27 E.,J., Hobsbawm and T.,O., Ranger, The invention of Tradition, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p.6.
2828 Ibid. p.9.
case in order to determine the cultural forces that constituted the Italian national identity, it is necessary to elaborate on the functioning of two specific types of invented traditions that played a significant role in the construction of the Italian narrative: heroes and myths.
Literature was of vital importance in the commemoration of a nation's symbols of the past. Intellectuals were able to convey a patriotic message by making use of literature as medium. In doing so, intellectuals had a significant influence on the definition of a nation's heroes and the determination of the nation's ethical or political ideals. Especially Romanticism has played a key role in sharing liberal ideals with the public. Romantics started to commemorate the writers and heroes of the past by idealizing them to a great extent. The Romantic novel proved itself to be an effective means of communication of idealized images of national heroes in order to foster political goals. Novels often conceived strong images that were perfectly suited to become adopted in the collective memory of a nation. Heroic figures could derive from old folk stories or legends, but the nineteenth century modern heroes encompassed more often historical figures. “In national
foundation sagas, the image of the hero incorporated superhuman traits, which elevated him close to divinity and made him an embodiment of a society's political and moral ideals”.30 Heroes
functioned as mediator between the nation on the one side, and their past and principles on the other, and executed a highly symbolic function.
Heroes were in ancient times imagined in possession of divine powers. Peoples narrated mythical stories about their gods, who they worshipped as their heroes. The mythical figures directly determined the cultural and political identity of the ancient societies.31 In the nineteenth century, the nation replaced religion with regard to cultural identity, and the mythical heroes who used to define the identity of former empires were in their turn replaced by mostly secular heroes. Despite the fact that the heroes were based on historical events, the legacy of these secular heroes took mythical proportions over the course of the nineteenth century. Patriots tended to change the conception of the historical figure by attributing a mythical status to the hero, in order to adopt him as a myth in the collective identity of the nation. “We should understand a nationalist myth as a story that simplifies, dramatizes, and selectively narrates the story of a nation's past and its place in the world, its historical eschatology: a story that elucidates its contemporary meaning through (re) constructing its past.”32 Myths are potentially strong forces for politicians to bind the nation. It is important to consider the relation between myths and the collective memory of a nation in detail, in order to be able to apply the theories afterwards on the Italian nation-building process.
30 J., Leerssen and A., Rigney, Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth Century Europe – Nation-Building and
Centenary Fever, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014, p.71.
31 J. Leerssen and M. Beller, Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a
critical survey, New York: Rodopi, 2007, p.274.
As mentioned earlier, we must strictly distinguish the notion of the individual memory from the collective memory. Individual memories are personal and it is difficult to pass on memories to next generations, as Duncan S.A. Bell states in his Mythscapes, memory, mythology and national identity.33 A memory site can pass on a memory, but it can never induce the same effects on a next
generation. People cannot have memories of events that occurred before they were born. Therefore, the collective memory cannot be a simple sum of all personal memories, since a collective memory contains often historical images. Furthermore, Bell complicates the existence of a singular
collective memory that would affect the collective identity of a nation as a whole.34 There are always subgroups in society who remember things differently as the narrative of the 'collective memory'. Memory is according to Bell not relevant for the analysis of a national identity. Instead of memories, Bell suggests to focus on myths and the total mythscape of the nation. A mythscape is ‘’the temporally and spatially extended discursive realm in which the myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly’’.35 Myths are constructed, and so they are capable of renegotiating history according to the spirit of the age. This makes the concept of the myth very attractive for nineteenth century intellectuals and politicians to manipulate the nation's narrative.
A successfully established foundational myth of a nation is capable of linking the nation directly to that particular symbolic myth. “As a landscape forms an image or images in a viewer’s brain, which can be recalled by remembering the moment or viewing or just by coming across the geographical name of the place, a symbolic mythscape can be said to consist of images that mostly work on an unconscious level and are activated by mention of a historical event, era, or figure.’’36 The mythscape of a nation is therefore a suited concept to study the construction of national narratives.
The concept of mythscape can effectively be applied to the Italian nation-building process, as myths determined for a big part the establishment of the Italian national identity in the nineteenth century, as will be argued in the next paragraph.
2.2 Heroes and myths as cultural forces for the Risorgimento
In Italy, it was G.R. Carli who applied the idea of an Italian patria based on a shared collective identity for the first time in 1764 in one of the most prominent periodicals of the Enlightenment: Il Caffè.37 Carli mentioned the Italian as form of identification instead of the Catholic or for instance
33 Ibid., p.72. 3434 Ibid., p.73. 3535 Ibid., p.75. 36 Ibid., p.75.
the Florentine. But what defined this sense of Italianità? This paragraph looks into the power of myths as political force in order to establish a collective Italian identity. Strengthening the cultural identity of the nation as a new model of identification would eventually entail far reaching political consequences.
When nationalism slowly replaced religion as supreme model of identification, the political ideology adopted old religious ideas, concepts and rituals to obtain legitimacy to the nation-state.38 Ancient religious communities appointed their heroes with divine characteristics. The modern communities copied this use of mythical characteristics and applied it to their own secular heroes. Myths functioned as binding element for the Italians; they gave agency to the nation. ‘’The re-appropriation of religious themes or ideas obviously did not take place without modification or adaptation, so that the ideas inspired by religion almost invariably took on new and original meanings’’.39 So was it possible that historical or religious texts and heroes became adopted in the Italian narrative in a completely different context. ''We can talk of the creation of a Risorgimento mythology made up of a series of interrelated myths, often built upon or including certain
significant historical individuals (Pope Gregory VII, Arnold of Brescia, Dante Alighieri, Cola di Rienzo, Machiavelli, Savonarola and Alfieri for example), particular texts like Dante's Monarchia and the Divina Commedia, or important historical events like the 'Sicilian Vespers' of 1272’’.40 This Italian mythscape represented the cultural backbone of the country.
Risorgimento intellectuals could influence the Italian collective identity by the circulation of myths as political instruments. “Succede cioè che – tra 1815 e 1847 – viene prodotta in Italia o all'estero (e in questo caso poi viene fatta entrare clandestinamente nella penisola per aggirare la censura) tutta una serie di opere di natura molto varia – raccolte poetiche, tragedie, romanzi, saggi storici, melodrammi, pitture – che rielabora in vari modo il mito della nazione italiana, della sua storia passata, delle sue vicende recenti, strutturando una narrazione piutosto coerente e compatta intorno a specifici temi e figure”.41 The task for the intellectuals was to find a historical figure that could be turned effectively into a myth that presented a simplified and dramatized version of the nation's narrative. But how would this Italian hero become characterized? Romanticism has been of fundamental importance in creating the image of the Italian hero. “Romantic novels represented crucially important tools in advancing the Italian national discourse throughout the nineteenth century”.42 The interplay between culture and politics is best tangible in the work of Romantics. A
38 S., Lachenicht and K., Heinsohn, Diaspora Identities – Exile, Nationalism and Cosmopolitism in Past and Present, Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2009, p.69.
39 Ibid., p.69
40 A., Thompson, George Eliot and Italy, Literary, Cultural and Political influences from Dante to the Risorgimento, London: MacMillan Press 1998, p.119. A., Thompson, George Eliot and Italy, Literary, Cultural and Political
influences from Dante to the Risorgimento, London: MacMillan Press 1998, p.7.
41 A., M., Banti, Il Risorgimento Italiano, Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza 2004, p.54.
Romantic mythical novel written in the spirit of the age, the right Zeitgeist, could effectively function as a strong format in the formation of a nation’s cultural identity and foster the realization of political goals. Romantic authors looked into the heroic past of Italy to define the characteristics of the national heroes. The Italian heroes became defined by the combination between adventure and Romantic rebellion. Exotic myths were centered on Garibaldi who initially presented himself as a Romantic pirate who exploited South America, or for instance the Sicilian bandit figure.43
Although these Romantic heroic images contained a dose of charisma, they were not compatible with the political aspirations of the Italian nation. The Romantic exotic images mostly lacked an important element: ‘’a devotion to a cause that transcends personal motives’’.44
The nation was in need of democratic heroes, and the search for the ultimate symbol for the Italian nation continued. “Romantic images do not, in fact, seem to have satisfied the demand for a plausible democratic hero who is also a true representative of the people”.45 Whether it was Mazzini or Garibaldi, every nineteenth century hero lacked a particular element to be able to transcend the nation and fully transform into a foundational Risorgimento myth, although Giuseppe Garibaldi approached the status. If we follow Duncan S.A. Bell’s findings on the myth, then myths based on historical figures are the most efficient way to reconstruct a national narrative. Living heroes rarely can reach the legendary status of a classic hero of the past. This is due to the fact that intellectuals can in theory re-negotiate history by composing a historical figure idealistically according to the preferences of the age. Italy’s past did provide in many literary icons, but the country lacked a united history that contained political or military icons. One of the (if not the) most powerful foundational myth of the Risorgimento was found in the thirteenth century poet Dante Alighieri. The process of his transition from hero to myth will comprehensively be mapped in the third chapter of this thesis. Dante was before the nineteenth century already generally known as one of the greatest poets of Italy’s history. But I will argue that an additional strong Risorgimento myth added an essential element to the poet, one that represented the key factor in the adoption of Dante in the Italian national narrative; the myth of exile. The myth of exile meant the factor that made Dante accessible to the public and simplified the poet’s liberal notion and legacy, as will be
elaborated on in chapter 3. The myth of exile contained certain weak sides, but Dante’s total legacy was able to neutralize these effects completely, as will be argued later on. The entanglement of the two myths could produce one of the most powerful foundational myths of the Risorgimento.
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.505.
43 S., Patriarca and L., Riall, The Risorgimento revisited. Nationalism and culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy, Londen, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, p.38.
44 Ibid., p.38. 45 Ibid., p.49.
2.3 The myth of exile
A significant number of intellectual patriots who fought for national freedom were forced to leave the country; they were sent into political exile. Nationalism generally tends to strengthen abroad among the exile communities, as was especially applicable to Risorgimento intellectual groups. However, the strongest influence of exile on the Risorgimento was not the direct rise of nationalism in exiled communities, but must be found in its symbolic function for national liberty and
independence. ‘’As in all national histories, the struggle against the foreign invader inevitably held a central place. Episodes in which Italians had successfully rebelled against foreign domination provide the focus for national history and mythology’’. Exile was regarded as a strong expression of love for the homeland and rebellion against the oppression. ‘’The experience of exile and the transformation of a number of exiled patriots into literary national heroes became tools of political propaganda, which greatly contributed to the spreading of the idea of the nation both within Italy and beyond it’’.46 As such, exile was slowly developed into a strong Risorgimento myth, for the first time communicated to the people in Romantic novels.
The occupation of Venice by the Austrians and Napoleon was the direct cause for Italian patriot Ugo Foscolo to compose his famous novel Le Lettere di Jacopo Ortis (first edition published in 1802), that was inspired on the political events. Foscolo communicated his political ideals about the Italian nation through metaphors in the novel, in doing so he could share his ideas with a big audience. Foscolo presented Jacopo Ortis as Italian patriot who fled from Italy because he could not live under foreign oppression. Exile was presented as ultimate form of suffering for the homeland. Jacopo exiled from his beloved Italy because he was looking for freedom, which he could not experience in occupied and divided Italy. 'Living abroad', away from home, was the only painful solution for Jacopo, who eventually committed suicide. ‘’This very powerful image of the condition of exile, repeated incessantly in the novel almost to the final moment in which Jacopo actually commits suicide, eventually reaching his much anticipated condition, will continue to haunt the Italian narrative tradition for a long time’’.47
The myth of exile could develop into a strong foundational myth for the nation, partly since it simplified and dramatized the national Italian narrative to a high extent. The narrative (framed as such by the intellectual patriots of the Romanticism) of the patriot who sacrificed his life by giving up on his homeland, could function with success as symbol for the Italian revolutionary spirit. This
46 M., Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, Sage Journals: The European History
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.493.
47 G., Guzzetta, Nation and Narration Nation and Narration. British Modernism in Italy in the First Half of the 20th
was in line with the ethical and moral ideals of the nation, and conveyed a strong liberal lesson to the people: the lesson to fight for national freedom and rebel actively against the oppression. Another important aspect that determined the successful adoption of the exile hero as a strong foundational myth was the fact that the exiles lend themselves perfectly for a religious
representation.
As noted before, religion has for a long time been the most important form of identification for the people. In order to address the people, heroes in the nineteenth century were often still depicted in a religious tradition, by attributing the hero with divine qualities and by the use of religious symbols. The Christian concept of martyrdom became adopted in the nineteenth century nationalist political discourse, and the exiles were depicted in religious fashion as ultimate martyrs for the homeland’’.48 Atto Vannucci published I martiri della libertà dal 1794 al 1848, which contained a collection of heroic biographies of exiled patriots.49
But intellectuals invented more religious metaphors for the exile. Exiles were pictured by the intellectual exiled politician Mazzini as apostles from the Bible, who spread a moral message over the whole continent; the message of liberty and democracy. The ancient Christian tradition of the pilgrimage became a metaphor for the political emigration of the exiles.50 Nationalism replaced religion, whereas the exile was presented as the apostles of this religion. With these references to Christian themes, the exile was represented as both a heroic and divine figure. This religious depiction of exiles contributed significantly to the mythical legacy of the exile hero, and moreover, it gave exile a more concrete political connotation.
In order to stress the enhanced level of politicization of the myth of exile it is useful to recall the image of the exile in Le Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, and compare this image with the above
mentioned religious image of the exile as apostle. In the novel of Foscolo, the exile is depicted as a patriot who decided to leave his beloved Italy since he could no longer live under foreign
oppression. The image of the exile that gets disillusioned and commits suicide can be contrasted sharply with the image of the exile as apostle on pilgrimage. Here, the exile is depicted as a divine or semi-divine character that actively fights for freedom and is full of hope. The task of the exile is here to convince people of a holy message, the message of national freedom. The image that derived from a Romantic novel had now evolved into political Risorgimento rhetoric. Mazzini acknowledged the strength of the image of exile. He copied the image of the exile as apostle, and exile in general as pilgrimage, from the works of respectively the French religious politician
48 A., Lyttelton, ‘Creating a National Past: History, Myth and Image in the Risorgimento’, in Making and Remaking
Italy, edited by Ascoli, A., R., and von Henneberg, K., Oxford/New York: Berg 2001, p.28.
49 M., Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, Sage Journals: The European History
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.449.
50 S., Lachenicht and K., Heinsohn, Diaspora Identities – Exile, Nationalism and Cosmopolitism in Past and Present, Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2009, p.74.
Lammenais and the Polish poet Mickiewicz.51 This implies that the image of the exile was spread all over Europe as a means of propaganda for the nineteenth century liberal battle for freedom.
Despite that the myth was successfully canonized into the Italian national narrative of the nineteenth century, the problematic disadvantages of the exile as powerful heroic symbol must be acknowledged. However, the patriotic intellectuals worked hard to strengthen the myth of exile, the negative link with failure and disillusionment remained. Foscolo depicted the exile with
desperation, and this image would never totally vanish. The exile could also be framed as the one left the battlefield earlier and chose to live in anonymity, far away from the revolution. As I will argue later, this negative side of exile did not hurt the legacy of Dante. Dante could be developed into the powerful Risorgimento myth because his enormous authority as the genius of poetry and the founder of Italian language. The history of Dante as political exile could effectively be used by patriots as evidence for the image of Dante as fighter for freedom. The case study will outline that the combination between these elements would blend into the most powerful myth of the
Risorgimento, and as such a strong political device.
Chapter 3 – The mythical evolution of Dante Alighieri
Between 1800 and 1850, La Divina Commedia was printed in 180 new editions, which is five times more than in the entire 17th century.52 However these numbers imply that Dante was widely read, in
51 M., Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, Sage Journals: The European History
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.504.
reality not many Italians actually read his poetry. How could a 13th century poet become the symbol for the political unification of Italy? This case study will demonstrate how a historical figure from a far past could transcend his status as literary icon, and could transform effectively into a mythical political force that fostered a nation-building process.
Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney have stressed that literature often has been used for the formulation of ethical or political ideals by the use of the past.53 As the Dante case will confirm, Romantics were in the period between the French Revolution and 1848 keen on idealizing historical figures. The figures entered the Risorgimento as historical heroes, and were slowly turned into mythical icons for the nation. Intellectuals cleverly promoted the Risorgimento heroes and myths in order to realize their ideals, and continue their path that eventually would lead to the unification of the Italian peninsula. By comparing different representations of Dante in literary texts in the period between 1800 and 1848, (the period that is generally known as the time when Italian culture was reinvented) the process of Dante’s institutionalization will be mapped in detail. Literature functioned as strong political device, especially during the Romantic period.
The poet Foscolo, the Romantic Byron and the politician Mazzini all focused on different aspects of Dante, and all had different motives to use Dante for their own purposes. The analysis of the Dante representations in the primary works of these nineteenth century intellectuals can help to identify in what ways Dante has been adopted in the Italian narrative, arguing that it was the myth of exile that was the key factor in the adoption of Dante as symbol of the nation. The medieval poet was generally known as poetic greatness, but was transformed into a mythical fighter for national freedom during the nineteenth century.
The case study illustrates the different stages in the process of politicization of a historical (literary) symbol. It functions to point out how 'traditions' as historical heroes and myths can be developed in order to strengthen a nation's collective identity, and it proves the power of intellectuals who can effectively manipulate a national narrative. The series of manipulated historical images eventually could result into far reaching structural political modifications.
3.1 Introduction to Dante
The northern part of what we know as Italy today was in the thirteenth-century politically divided into two parties: the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. The Ghibellines supported the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and were against the territorial power of the Pope, whereas the Guelfs believed in Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford:
Oxford Scholarship Online 2012, p.19.
53 J., Leerssen and A., Rigney, Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth Century Europe – Nation-Building and
the Pope as legitimate ruler. The conflict between the two parties was rooted in spiritual
considerations, but in the thirteenth century it had evolved into a political dispute. “The Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or sometimes of oppression; the Guelfs were on the side of liberty and self-government. Again, the Ghibellines were the supporter of a universal Empire, of which Italy was to be the head; the Guelfs were on the side of national life and national individuality”.54
Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, in the middle of this political upheaval. He was born in a noble family, but it can be assumed that the family was not very rich.55 In Florence the majority of the city was part of the Guelf movement, and also Dante's father and Dante himself were Guelfs. In 1289, the Guelfs definitely won the battle against the Ghibellines. But the Guelfs in Florence subdivided into two separate groups: white and black Guelfs. Black Guelfs were originally only members of high noble aristocratic families, whereas the white Guelfs were regarded as people from the folk. Dante was part of the liberal white movement of the Guelfs, who were striving for self-government, for them this also meant being independent from Papal influence. Dante was engaged in a high function in the city council in these days. When Dante was in Rome for a meeting, the Pope sent an army to Florence to regain the power of the Ghibellines in Florence. Dante was forced into exile for the rest of his life. It was in these last twenty years of Dante's life that he further developed his literary talents, and wrote his most famous work La Divina
Commedia, that is until today considered as one of the greatest works of world literature. Dante also promoted Italian as language in order to foster Italian unity, and because of his efforts he is known as the father of Italian language.
3.2 Foscolo's Dante: 'Il poeta-vate'
In the period prior to the first Italian war of independence (1848), Italian culture was reinvented. After the French Revolution, nationalists were searching for a new format and new heroes to convey their patriotic message. The ideas of Ludwig Tieck, who regarded literature as ultimate determining factor for a nation's identity, were embraced by Italian patriots. “The choice of a literary icon is due to the fact that Italians identified their common sense of belonging, in the absence of political, economic and military unity, with literature”.56 Dante is currently remembered 54 P., Toynbee, Dante Alighieri: his life and works, London: Methuen 1910, p.5.
55 G., Mazzotta, Reading Dante, New Haven: Yale University Press 2013, p.88.
as the founder of Italian literature; however Petrarch was the main frame of reference before the nineteenth century. “Only with full effect of the Enlightenment, and not before the late 1700s, did Italian authors begin to feel that the lyrical Petrarchan style, which had nourished European poetry for centuries, was ill-equipped to express their new ideas about society and was inappropriate for communicating their developing civil and national interests”.57
The young Italian poet Ugo Foscolo became one of the first who classified Dante's poetry as typically Italian. Foscolo himself had developed strong patriotic feelings that were especially triggered when Napoleon occupied Northern parts of Italy, and betrayed the country by bringing it under control of Austria in 1797.58 Foscolo detected values and themes in Dante's poetry that he associated with hope and action. He recognized a powerful political potential in Dante's poetry.
Fundamental for the further politicization of Dante is that Foscolo turned away from the Romantic autobiographical conception of Dante. ''Rather than translate the meaning of the
Commedia into a nineteenth century idiom, Foscolo believed that inquiry into the historical milieu and overall strangeness of the Commedia offered the interpreter more than the increasingly
subjective readings of the poem that had transformed Dante into a privileged model of the self in Romantic autobiography''.59 The Romantic autobiographical interpretation of Dante was in line with a 'new readership' that emerged in the eighteenth century and continued in the nineteenth century.60 It focused on the daily lives of individuals, which included manners, habits and characters of historical persons. Romantic readers tried to discover 'new relations' between the self and the world in the texts of Dante, they interpreted the works in the light of their own generation. Foscolo
criticized this reading of Dante, he changed the focus from the personal to the notion of Dante's poetic legacy. Herewith he paved the way for a more political interpretation of the poet.
Foscolo emphasized Dante's brilliant use of the periphrasis and above all the use of allegory, a literary device that he regarded as essentially Italian. “Foscolo's defense of allegory in the
'Dissertation' squares with his overall reading of Dante as a supreme contributor to the discourse of national identity in the tradition of the poeta vate (poet-prophet) that also encompasses the writings of Petrarch and Alfier”.61 Foscolo continually used the literary technique himself, in which he Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford: Oxford
Scholarship Online 2012, p.35.
57 A., Ciccarelli, ‘Dante and Italian Culture from the Risorgimento to World War 1’, Annual Report of the Dante
Society 119, (2001), p.127.
58 M., Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, Sage Journals: The European History
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.495.
59 J., Luzzi, ‘Founders of Italian Literature’: Dante, Petrarch, and National Identity in Ugo Foscolo’, in Dante in the
Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford:
Oxford Scholarship Online 2012, p.14.
60 B., Caine, Biography and History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.14.
61 J., Luzzi, ‘Founders of Italian Literature’: Dante, Petrarch, and National Identity in Ugo Foscolo’, in Dante in the
Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford:
paraphrased Dante's texts and made use of Dante's observations in order to promote the poet. He reflected Dante's poetic themes and observations on the nineteenth century making of the Italian nation. In doing so, he tried to communicate and foster his own ideals. Because Dante was seen as a prophet, ''Dante gave voice to something that continued beyond him and that was to be fulfilled subsequently. Most frequently this larger entity was conceived to be a political one, and Dante was seen either as a religious reformer foretelling the Reformation or as a patriot researching forward to the future unification and independence of Italy- or as an agglomeration of the two''.62
A good example of Foscolo's Dantesque allegoric use are his references in Dei Sepolcri (1806), one of the masterpieces of Foscolo. In Dei Sepolcri Foscolo presents the idea of an Italian nation based on the remembrance of the great literary figures of the past.63 The literary figures of the must function as example for nineteenth century Italians. Foscolo used Christian themes and rhetoric from Dante's Paradiso in his Dei Sepolcri, such as the resurrection of Troy despite all the suffering, and Cacciaguida's prediction of Dante's exile.64 Rome was, according to the mythology, founded as the Christian successor of Troy. Cacciaguida predicted in Dante's Paradiso that Dante would meet a certain Cangrande during his period of exile, and that this Cangrande's generosity would have a positive outcome for Dante.65 Foscolo blended the two storylines in a modern Italian version, arguing that despite suffering and times of exile, the positive path would eventually be found, and the country would resurrect and unite. Beside the fact that Foscolo gave Dante's Christian poetic rhetoric a new secular look, he also focused on another key element that fostered Dante's canonization in the Italian national narrative; his period of exile.
The poetry of Dante was mostly suited for an intellectual audience. How could Dante become a myth, a symbol for the whole nation, if only a limited group of people could really grasp the meaning of his works? Although Foscolo mainly wanted to focus on the poetic qualities of Dante's canon, he recognized Dante's experience of exile as a force of patriotic love and a revolutionary spirit that could appeal to the nation. As S.A. Bell's theory about myths and the collective identity has shown that the success of a foundational myth is dependent of its appeal to the nation instead of its historical accuracy. Foscolo's emphasis on the exilic aspect of Dante meant a key moment in the adoption of Dante in the Italian national narrative. Exile was presented as the ultimate sacrifice for the nation and became a symbol for the fight for freedom. Foscolo popularized the myth of exile, in the same time as he popularized Dante as symbol for the nation. I will argue 62R. H., Lansing and T., Barolini, The Dante encyclopedia, New York: Garland Pub 2000, p.274.
63 G., Guzzetta, Nation and Narration Nation and Narration. British Modernism in Italy in the First Half of the 20th
Century, Ravenna: Longo, 2004, p.10.
64 J., Luzzi, ‘Founders of Italian Literature’: Dante, Petrarch, and National Identity in Ugo Foscolo’, in Dante in the
Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford:
Oxford Scholarship Online 2012, p.26.
65 K., Olson, Courtesy Lost: Dante Boccaccio, and the literature of history, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2015, p.103.
that this combination would later in the century evolve into the strongest myth of the Risorgimento. Foscolo himself exiled from Venice to Milan (and later to England) after Napoleon had occupied the area, so he could identify himself even more with Dante because of their shared history of political exile. By emphasizing Dante's history of exile, Foscolo could legitimate his own experiences on the grounds of his honorable predecessor, who functioned as source of inspiration. But the most important reason for Foscolo to elaborate on the theme of exile was its symbolizing link with opposition against (foreign) authority and freedom, inspired on the thoughts of Alfieri in the eighteenth century. Although Alfieri still referred to an abstract concept of patria with vague political connotations, Foscolo made it already more concrete and political.66
Foscolo's style became more impassioned in his period of exile in England, it seems that his patriotism had firmly grown during his time in exile. In his publications on Dante in the Edinburgh Review in 1818, Foscolo depicted a Romantic image of Dante as protagonist of freedom, related to the clerical domination in both Foscolo's and Dante's Italy. ''The reformation had set Europe on fire, and Dante had dared to condemn even Popes to hell. In the Paradise, St. Peter himself utters a sublime invective against the temporal power of the Church. In a Latin work on monarchy, the Poet had maintained the superiority of the Emperors over the Popes; and Protestant writers quoted his authority as 'one of the Witnesses of the Truth''.67
Dante is represented by Foscolo as poeta-vate, which means prophet-poet. Foscolo
approaches Dante primarily as poet, he recognized in Dante the typical Italian style of poetry: the use of style figures such as the allegory, and periphrases of older texts such as mythologies in order to outline ethical or political ideals. Italy is the only country in the EU with a literary figure on the most valuable coin68. The symbols depicted on the national coins define the cultural identity of nation states. ‘’Historical motives tend to be selected to represent various regions within the nation, ages of national splendor and kinds of achievement, so that they, taken as a whole, represent the moral, intellectual and cultural strength of a country’’.69 The country based its identity for a big part on literary heroes of the past; they defined what it encompassed to be Italian.
The Romantic period has been of fundamental importance in shaping the Italian nation, Romantics looked into the past in order to define the national principles and heroes. Whereas Romantics focused on the self and Dante, Foscolo drew attention to the literary legacy of Dante and linked this to the Italian nation. Herewith he made a crucial change in the perception of Dante, it
66 M., Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, Sage Journals: The European History
Quarterly 36, (2006): p.496.
67 U., Foscolo, ‘To Dante’, Edinburgh Review, Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1818, p.462.
68 S., Jossa, ‘Politics vs. Literature: The Myth of Dante and the Italian National Identity’, in Dante in the Long
Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity and Appropriation, edited by Audeh, A., and Havely, N., Oxford: Oxford
Scholarship Online 2012, p.34.
69 J., Fornäs, ‘Meaning of Money: The Euro as a Sign of Value and of Cultural Identity’, in: We Europeans? Media,
