ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES Politics and Sentiments in Risorgimento Italy Melodrama and the Nation Carlotta Sorba Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA Phillip V.  Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY, USA Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835 Carlotta Sorba Politics and Sentiments in Risorgimento Italy Melodrama and the Nation Carlotta Sorba University of Padua Padua, Italy Based on a translation from the Italian language edition: Il melodramma della nazione. Politica e sentimenti nell’Italia del Risorgimento, by Laterza, Roma-Bari 2015 Translated by Clelia Boscolo ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic) Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-030-69731-0 ISBN 978-3-030-69732-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69732-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Mode d’Italia [Italian Fashion] in “Il Corriere delle Dame”, 27 march 1848 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Silvio Lanaro, master and teacher of dangerous circumnavigations A cknowledgements The history of this book is long, episodic and fragmented, mostly because it has been caught between many other activities. Only a long-distance commuter, who, like me, relishes getting involved in the most diverse teaching and academic commitments, can understand what I mean. As sometimes happens, it arose from an essay written almost by chance, when my research interests seemed to take me in another, especially chronologi- cal direction. But in the end, it has managed to hold together a long trail of reading and interests, not always conventional in terms of contempo- rary history. The original essay was included in Einaudi’s Annal of the History of Italy devoted to the Risorgimento. I am grateful to the two cura- tors, Alberto Mario Banti and Paul Ginsborg, for encouraging me to con- tinue to investigate the melodramatisation of politics, not at all an easy topic to deal with but undoubtedly fascinating. In recent years, I have presented previews and fragments on several occasions: at the Pisa seminar of cultural history organized by Alberto Mario Banti and Vinzia Fiorino; at the Risorgimento revisited conference organised in New York by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall; at Christophe Charle’s seminar at the École Normale Supérieur in Paris; at the confer- ence Rileggere l’Ottocento: Risorgimento e nazione (Rereading the nine- teenth century: Risorgimento and nationhood) organised by Maria Luisa Betri in Milan; at the workshop entitled The Origins of Modern Mass Culture: European Leisure in a Comparative Perspective (1660–1870) coordinated by Peter Borsay and Jan Hein Furnee for the European Science Foundation (Gregynog, Wales); finally at the conference Italy Made! Passions and Project organised by Giulia Sissa in Los Angeles vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (UCLA). I want to thank them all for the suggestions, objections and indications that emerged on those occasions, as well as those who prompted me to publish some excerpts in journals or in collective volumes (Francesco Traniello for Contemporanea, Christophe Charle for Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, Jane Fulcher for The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music, Axel Korner for “Journal of Modern Italian Studies”). Special thanks also go to a book and its completely unaware author: Peter Brooks’ Melodramatic Imagination, published by Yale University Press in 1976 and translated into Italian a few years later by Pratiche edi- trice. This book managed to tie together different parts of my life: my early collaboration with a small but outstanding publisher and my current historical research work, prompting this volume, which I wrote in three different places—Parma, Padua and Paris—feeling lucky to do so. The English edition of a book conceived in another language always requires a complex work of revision and integration of content and form. I would not have been able to do this without the help of many people at Palgrave Macmillan who accompanied me through the various stages of editing and production with great competence and kindness. I would like to thank them all warmly, in simple order of appearance: Megan Laddusaw, Meagan Simpson, Tikoji Rao, Sarulatha Krishnamurthy. Heartfelt thanks also go to Stan Pugliese for his immediate interest in my book. In addition to Silvio Lanaro, whose most pungent comments and criti- cism I am trying to imagine, it is dedicated to three people: Luciano, Anna and Umberto Sorba, who are unable to read it but whom I continually find within myself and in these pages. For this English edition of the book, final, very warm thanks go to my translator, Clelia Boscolo, for her patience, passion and intelligence. And a final dedication to Maddalena, a beautiful person with whom life might have been more generous. c ontents 1 Introduction: Emotions, Politics, Entertainment—A Nineteenth-Century Transnational Plot 1 Emotionality During the Risorgimento 2 Politics, Spectacle and Entertainment in Early Nineteenth- Century Europe 7 The Public Sphere During the Risorgimento: New Historical Readings 11 Structure of the Book 13 2 Emotions for Everyone: New Entertainment Spaces in Europe 15 Two Beginnings 15 Paris, Boulevard du Temple 21 London, the South and the East End 29 From Market to Politics and Back 33 Republican Milan and the Idea of the Citizen-Spectator 39 3 A Theatrical Genre for Post-Revolutionary Society 53 Looking for the Language of Emotions 54 The Mélodrame as Easily Accessible Entertainment 62 The Industry of the Melodrama 68 Between England and Italy: In the Footsteps of a Transnational Product 77 ix x CONTENTS 4 Between Mélodrame and Melodramatic Imagination 83 Who Is Afraid of the Melodrama? The Mélo as “mover of the heart” 83 Melodramatic Style and Political Conflict in the Early Nineteenth Century 92 National Narratives 98 5 Melodrama Italian-Style: In Search of an Audience Between Fiction and Politics 105 New Narratives of the Past Between Rossini and Walter Scott 107 Foscolo, Mazzini and an Audience for Politics 114 Towards an “Industrial Literature”? 120 Melodrama Italian-Style 125 6 The Melodramatic Narration of Oppressed Italy 131 Truth and Fiction 131 The Narrative Device 136 Oppression and Redemption 141 From the Past to the Present: The Three Years Between 1846–1849 145 The History of Italy Told to the People 150 A Few Figures and a Little About Trade 154 Violence, Deceptions, Sieges: Sentimentalising Politics 159 The Vocabulary of Emotivity Between Colloquialisms and Archaisms 168 A mélo About 1848 173 7 Not Just Words: Emotional Bodies in the “Long 1848” 177 A Theatrical Revolution 179 Dramatising the Past 183 The Role of Communicators 188 The Physiognomy of Patriotism 201 Clothes, Beards and Feathered Hats 206 Fashion Italian-Style 220 Patriots, Knights, Brigands and Robbers 225 An Interpretation: Between Performativity and Surveillance 231