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Politics and Sentiments in Risorgimento Italy

Melodrama and the Nation

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Carlotta Sorba

    1. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

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  • Makes available in English the author's prize winning monograph Il melodramma della nazione (Laterza, 2015)
  • Explores how narratives of nationhood during the Italian Risorgimento used melodramatic political language to inspire patriots
  • Investigates the transnational links between mobilisation and the emergence of mass culture

Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies (IIAS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Emotions, Politics, Entertainment—A Nineteenth-Century Transnational Plot

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 1-14

  3. Emotions for Everyone: New Entertainment Spaces in Europe

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 15-51

  4. A Theatrical Genre for Post-Revolutionary Society

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 53-82

  5. Between Mélodrame and Melodramatic Imagination

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 83-104

  6. Melodrama Italian-Style: In Search of an Audience Between Fiction and Politics

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 105-129

  7. The Melodramatic Narration of Oppressed Italy

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 131-175

  8. Not Just Words: Emotional Bodies in the “Long 1848”

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 177-238

  9. Politics and the Language of Sentiment

    • Carlotta Sorba
    Pages 239-260

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 261-302
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Keywords

About this book

This book investigates the narrative of nationhood during the Italian Risorgimento and its ability to reach a new and wider audience. In Italy, an extraordinary emotional excitement pervaded the struggle for national independence, suffusing the speeches and actions of patriots. This book shows how this ardour borrowed the tones, figures and spectacular nature of the melodramatic imagination feeding the theatre and literature of the time, and how it could resonate with a largely uneducated audience. An important contribution to the new historiography on the Italian Risorgimento and on nineteenth-century nationalism in Europe, it offers a fresh perspective on the public sphere during the Risorgimento, focusing on the transnational links between political mobilisation and the growth of new media and burgeoning mass culture. 

Reviews

‘A model of how culture can be related to politics, even politics of the very highest level, this book offers a multitude of sparkling and surprising insights into melodrama, opera, and political sensibilities, not just in Italy but in France, England, and eastern Europe as well. The author’s deep learning and elegant style are bound to attract readers to this period that was so critical to the formation of modern politics.’

—Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

‘In this elegantly written and tightly focused book Carlotta Sorba provides an original explanation for the popular appeal of the Italian Risorgimento as an emotional project. By focusing on its cultural origins, this book puts the 1848 revolutionary experience in Italy back where it belongs: the European-wide rise of new media and theatrical performances. This is major contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century European political culture.’

—Maurizio Isabella, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Carlotta Sorba

About the author

Carlotta Sorba is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Padua and founder of the Centro interuniversitario di storia culturale (CSC), Italy. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Europe with special interest in the relationship between theatre, society and politics.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Politics and Sentiments in Risorgimento Italy

  • Book Subtitle: Melodrama and the Nation

  • Authors: Carlotta Sorba

  • Series Title: Italian and Italian American Studies

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69732-7

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-69731-0Published: 04 May 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-69734-1Published: 04 May 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-69732-7Published: 03 May 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2635-2931

  • Series E-ISSN: 2635-294X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 302

  • Number of Illustrations: 15 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of Italy, Cultural History, Political History

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