Description
Book SynopsisFor centuries the society and politics of Old Regime Europe relied on the strong connection between past, present, and future and on a belief in the unstoppable continuity of time. What happened during the eighteenth century when the Age of Revolutions claimed to cancel the previous social order and announced the dawn of a new era? This book explores how antiquarianism provided new political bodies with allegedly time-hallowed traditions and so served as a source of legitimacy for reshaping European politics. The love for antiquities forged a common language of political communication within a burgeoning public sphere.
To understand why this happened, Marco Cavarzere focuses on the cultural debates taking place in the Italian states from 1748 until 1796. During this period, governments tried to establish regional “national cultures” through erudite scholarship, with the intent of creating new administrative and political centralization within individual Italian states. Meanwhile, other sectors of local societies used the tools of antiquarianism in order to offer a counter-narrative on these political reforms.
Ultimately, this book proposes a localized way of reading antiquarian texts. Far from presenting timeless knowledge, erudition in fact gave voice to specific tensions which were linked to restricted political arenas and regional public opinion.
Trade Review‘Wide-ranging and insightful… this book has achieved the not so small feat of offering an original interpretation of the culture of antiquarianism across the Italian peninsula. Rich in both insights and material, it has the enviable merits of helping to set an agenda for new work on the politics of scholarship in the age of Enlightenment, as well as introducing Italy’s eighteenth century to a broader public, which it will enthrall with its grand overview of historical culture from the medium of the book to that of the stage.’ Barbara Naddeo, Journal of Modern History
Table of ContentsList of figures
IntroductionConcepts
Contents
I. Background
Chapter 1: A country under constructionPushing Italy (and the world) aside
Nations and
patrieLanguages of Italy
Chapter 2: The importance of being eruditeThe Muratorian moment
Antiquarianism and political identities
Erudition and society
Chapter 3: Institutional settingsPublic policies of communication
Aristocratic circles
Communication short circuits
II. Difficult transitions
Chapter 4: Naturalizing sovereignty: law and history“The national king”
Conflicting kings
National laws
A century without Rome
Chapter 5: The land of Italian nations: space and historyGeography and politics
Chorographic debates
Antiquarian cartographies
Ritual geographies
Chapter 6: Historical representation: collective memory and historyHard times for state historiography
New media: heroic genealogies
National history on stage
Conclusion: an unfinished transition
Bibliography
Index
