Guilty, Sexual and Local: Nature for the Nation in the Italian Narrative of the Bel Paese (19th century) (2015)
Significant historiographical works have been dedicated to the role of nature in many national cultures, but such studies for the process of development of Italian national identity are still rather rare. This article aims to partially fill this gap, attempting to provide insight into the corpus of the so-called 'Risorgimental canon': in other terms, the most influential literary texts of the cultural and political movement aiming to unify the States beneath the borders of the Alps in a single nation, Italy. The 'Risorgimento'- the act of 'rising again' - of Italian national identity. This paper examines patriotic poetry and novels in the context of their contemporary culture as both expressions and performances of the relationship between the environmental approach and national narrative. In particular this essay explores the rhetorical use of the environment in national discourse, through the representation of the imagined geographical identity, the poetry of national landscape and the value attributed to Nature. At this time, while the new national sentiment was being built, local identities continued to persist, and emerged in the canon, striking intellectuals with the great difficulties of mixing together old and new identities. As it inherited a long environmental tradition, relating to Romanticism, and imagined a new political identity, the Risorgimento shaped and institutionalised the general idea of nature in the national discourse about the Bel Paese.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Rantatalo, Petra;
Åckerberg, Sofia;
(2001)
“Ansikte mot ansikte med de verkliga tinger”: Folkskolans åkådningsundervisning, Skansen och den nya nationalismen. (“Face to face with real objects:” The visual education of the Swedish elementary school, Skansen and the new nationalism.)
(/isis/citation/CBB000101290/)
Chapter
Aaron Sachs;
(2015)
Stumps in the Wilderness
(/isis/citation/CBB467169931/)
Chapter
Lisa M. Brady;
(2015)
Nature as Friction: Integrating Clausewitz into Environmental Histories of the Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB221825289/)
Chapter
Paul S. Sutter;
(2015)
“Waving the Muddy Shirt”
(/isis/citation/CBB792138285/)
Chapter
Drew A. Swanson;
(2015)
War Is Hell, So Have a Chew: The Persistence of Agroenvironmental Ideas in the Civil War Piedmont
(/isis/citation/CBB446832632/)
Chapter
Timothy Silver;
(2015)
Yancey County Goes to War: A Case Study of People and Nature on Home Front and Battlefield, 1861–1865
(/isis/citation/CBB140452060/)
Chapter
Timothy Johnson;
(2015)
Reconstructing the Soil: Emancipation and the Roots of Chemical-Dependent Agriculture in America
(/isis/citation/CBB997002896/)
Chapter
John C. Inscoe;
(2015)
“The Strength of the Hills”: Representations of Appalachian Wilderness as Civil War Refuge
(/isis/citation/CBB591936630/)
Chapter
Brian Allen Drake;
(2015)
New Fields of Battle: Nature, Environmental History, and the Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB154844171/)
Chapter
Megan Kate Nelson;
(2015)
“The Difficulties and Seductions of the Desert”: Landscapes of War in 1861 New Mexico
(/isis/citation/CBB064789157/)
Book
Brian Drake;
(2015)
The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB641480801/)
Book
Brady, Lisa M.;
(2012)
War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB001212118/)
Chapter
Kathryn Shively Meier;
(2015)
“The Man Who Has Nothing to Lose”: Environmental Impacts on Civil War Straggling in 1862 Virginia
(/isis/citation/CBB802538758/)
Book
Ruth Rogaski;
(2022)
Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland
(/isis/citation/CBB625883025/)
Chapter
Mart A. Stewart;
(2015)
Walking, Running, and Marching into an Environmental History of the Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB943411511/)
Chapter
Kenneth W. Noe;
(2015)
Fateful Lightning: The Significance of Weather and Climate to Civil War History
(/isis/citation/CBB769919988/)
Book
Natasha Zaretsky;
(2018)
Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the political transformation of the 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB057326850/)
Article
Bruce Tranter;
Libby Lester;
(2015)
Climate Patriots? Concern Over Climate Change and Other Environmental Issues in Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB974055589/)
Article
Macfarlane, Daniel;
(2013)
“A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract”: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls
(/isis/citation/CBB001213629/)
Book
Valsania, Maurizio;
(2013)
Nature's Man: Thomas Jefferson's Philosophical Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB001550206/)
Be the first to comment!