The Italian Risorgimento in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Popular Culture

This book examines the transnational scope of the Italian Risorgimento from a British perspective. It considers British (expatriate) women’s poetry from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the role of the British press and the serial publications of the Society of the Friends of Italy, a London-based radical nationalist group founded by Giuseppe Mazzini, as essential for the creation of a British Risorgimento narrative and examines each group’s methods and influence in three case studies. This literary and cultural studies approach to the Italian national movement is particularly interested in the ways in which the ongoing movement for Italian unification influenced mid-nineteenth-century British literature and popular culture and it identifies and analyses a particular rhetorical repertoire that was coined in the mid-nineteenth century and redeployed by later generations for the British women’s movement. Thus, this book showcases that this rhetorical repertoire turned into a literary tradition that remained of paramount importance for both Italian national and women’s emancipation throughout and beyond the nineteenth century.