The Antiquity of the Italian Nation: The Cultural Origins of a Political Myth in Modern Italy, 1796-1943 by Antonino De Francesco
Requirements: .PDF reader, 1.9 MB
Overview:
At the beginning of the 19th century, with Italy under Napoleon, the antiquarian topic of anti-Romanism was turned against the dominant French culture and became a pillar of the nation-building process. The antiquity of the Italian nation—prior to the Roman dominion—was evoked in order to support an inveterate Italian cultural primacy and proved very useful for creating Italian nationalism. However, this topic is completely forgotten today because, at the end of the 19th century, Italian studies of Roman history, following the example of Mommsen, would drape a long veil over the period of earliest Italy, while, subsequently, Fascism openly claimed the legacy of the Roman Empire. Italic antiquity would, however, remain alive throughout those years and it often returned as a theme, intersecting deeply with the political and cultural life of modern Italy. This book examines the constantly reasserted antiquity of the Italian nation and its different uses in history, archaeology, palaeoethnology, and anthropology, from the Napoleonic period to the collapse of Fascism. Examining the fortunes and misfortunes of this subject, it challenges the view of 19th-century Italian nationalism as an ethnical movement, suggesting how deeply the image of pre-Roman Italy forged the political and cultural sensibility of modern Italy.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History
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