Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the 2018 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, American Historical Association"
"[
America in Italy] makes an extremely valuable contribution to both intellectual and cultural history by its close examination of what this diverse group of Italian intellectuals, activists, and, to a lesser degree, the Italian ‘public' understood about American life and political institutions (and the impact of this understanding on their nationalist struggle)." * Choice *
"Korner is perfectly positioned to undertake the ambitious task of writing a comprehensive overview of the history of the images of America in Italy between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The result of his effort is an elegantly written, extraordinarily erudite and highly innovative work, whose reading will reward both Italian and American scholars with the discovery of a multitude of cultural and political connections between eighteenth- and nineteenth century Italy and the United States."
---Enrico Dal Lago, European History QuarterlyTable of ContentsPreface xi A Note on References and Bibliography xvii Introduction 1 A White Canvas 1 Where, When, and What Was America? 7 European Exchanges 9 Transatlantic Connections 13 America's Place on the Risorgimento's Map 16 Literary Tropes 25 Explaining America 31 Pamphlets, Not Muskets 37 Singing and Dancing America 40 1 America as History 42 Fratricide and Civil War 42 Histories and the Politics of Reception: Carlo Botta 46 History, Literature, and the "Erotics of Art" 56 Botta's Federalism of Nation-States 59 Transatlantic Botta 60 Carlo Giuseppe Londonio and the American Revolution 62 America and Universal History: Giuseppe Compagnoni 66 Historiography as Political Thought 73 2 Concepts in the Language of Politics 78 Political Ideas and National Character 78 Natural Rights and Constitutional Government 80 Luigi Angeloni and Jacobin Americanism 85 Representation in Transnational Perspective: Romagnosi and Balbo 87 Democratic Challenges and the Limits of Italian Anglophilia 93 Federalism 97 Gioberti's Federalism, or "Britain, the Sicily of Europe" 100 Rosmini and the Limits of American Democracy 103 Mazzini's Challenge: Democracy beyond the American Way 108 Democratic Diversions from Mazzini 112 3 A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848 114 An Age of Constitutions: From 1820 to 1848 114 Carlo Cattaneo and the Revolution in Lombardy 121 Cattaneo's Understanding of American Democracy 130 Giuseppe Montanelli and Federal Democracy in Tuscany 138 Independence and Constitutional Models in Sicily 146 From Defeat to Annexation 160 4 Unveiling Modernity: Verdi's America and the Unification of Italy 163 Murder in Boston, Parma, and Paris 163 Un ballo and the Unification of Italy 167 Staging the New World 169 Un ballo, from Rome to the World 172 Reading Un ballo in maschera 175 Verdi's America 177 Turning Gustavo into Riccardo 185 Virgil in America 191 Verdi and "il suo tempo" 193 Lincoln's Un ballo 195 5 A War for Uncle Tom: Slavery and the American Civil War in Italy 199 "Of the Foul Blood of Negroes" 199 Slavery in Italian Political Thought 200 Slavery on Stage 206 Reading Uncle Tom 210 Italian Unification and the American Civil War 215 From Subject Nation to International Arbitrator 221 Conclusions 225 Notes 233 Bibliography 293 Index 333
