Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"An ambitious new intellectual history of Italy that convincingly returns Petrarch and Petrarchism to a position of centrality, this book offers a powerful and generative account of the Italian tradition as a process of 'tradition
making.' With innovative accounts of such seminal figures as Vico, Goldoni, De Sanctis, and Croce, Rubini demonstrates how, across time, a concern with the shared past has shaped Italian thought and opened new possibilities for the future."
-- Jurors' citation * 2022 AAIS Book Prize, first prize for History, Society, and Politics *
"
Posterity should spark an ongoing conversation about the past, present, and future of Renaissance letters, and no doubt its author would find this conversation in keeping with his message." * Intellectual History Review *
"Rubini traces the 'historical continuity' of humanism, which he equates with Petrarchism through the work of seemingly disparate Italian thinkers from the 14th through the 20th centuries. . . Classified under Italian history in the Library of Congress system, this interdisciplinary volume defies categorization and will interest scholars working on Italian literary, cultural, or Renaissance studies, as well as history, philosophy, and theater." * Choice *
"Rubini’s
Posterity brilliantly questions the presumption that traditions are retrospectively invented, by instead exploring the control certain Italian writers exerted over their own legacies. . . . Rubini strives not just to comprehend how traditions develop but also to remark on the conscious efforts made to transfer and reformulate traditions across time. . . . A remarkable study." * MLN (Modern Language Notes) *
“…a veritable x-ray of Italian intellectual life…The humanist tradition [in Rubini’s telling] is also a militant one, constantly shaped by history’s fits and starts, forged from conflicts and frictions, and projected towards the future with the aim of fulfilling the humanistic project of the total, comprehensive transformation of humankind.” * Italian Culture (translated from Italian) *
"[
Posterity’s] goal is not at all that of simply 'recovering the past,' no matter how preeminent such a past may have been. . . . Its aim is rather to investigate . . . the invention of tradition as such. Traditions are not found, they are not explored, nor are they appraised the way some historians are wont to do: they can only be invented.” * Forum Italicum (translated from Italian) *
“Rubini is remarkable in his double competence, both as a historian of literary art who is sensitive to aesthetic creation and as an intellectual historian who defines novel trends and modes of inquiry practices. With considerable ingenuity, Rubini describes the autobiographical as defining Italian Humanism, drawing a distinction between Humanism as inquiry and Renaissance as domain.” -- Nancy S. Struever, Johns Hopkins University
“
Posterity is commendable for the constellation of authors it proposes, presenting the reader with unexpected combinations and drawing new trajectories from author to author. Rubini impressively combines different readings and introduces canonical Italian figures in the global debate. This is a work that will appeal to intellectual historians and scholars of Italy across many disciplines.” -- Eleonora Stoppino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“This marvelous book explores intricate links between Petrarchan hermeneutics and Renaissance humanism, as well as the endurance and adaptability of both to modern and postmodern thought. Its argument unfolds as an adventure of transhistorical magnitude, propelling the past into the present and beyond to the future with powerful effect. Rubini everywhere brings passion and enthusiasm to bear upon analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary theory and practice.” -- William J. Kennedy, Avalon Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Cornell University
“Beginning with a bravura reinterpretation of Petrarch and his place in literary history, Rubini suggests that reciprocity between reading and writing, interpreter and object of interpretation, present and past—serves as the key element allowing literature to live and thus to become more than soul-deadening antiquarianism. For Rubini, Petrarch foresaw that posterity would allow continual interpretation and reinterpretation of his work, pointing toward a future in which later interpreters would reveal more about (and draw more from) his work than his contemporaries ever could do. It is a provocative, timely, and fascinating book.” -- Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Whole or Nothing
The Method: Hermeneutics between Gadamer and Betti
The Story: Humanism between Petrarch and Gramsci
One Primi and Ultimi: Petrarch’s Corpus
Introduction: Total Petrarch, Different Petrarch?
“I was not born to be a slave of my body”: (Re-)writing the Past
Reading the Future
Including the Excluded: Petrarch’s Familiar Invectives
Conclusion
Two The Purpose of Literary Criticism: Francesco De Sanctis’s (Anti-)Petrarchism
Introduction: Italian Petrarch, (Un-)congenial Petrarch
A Rhetorical Existence
“Going to the people”: Literary Criticism as Moral Philosophy
The Anti-Petrarch
Conclusion: Petrarch as Pharmakon
Three “Do not grow weary of reading, for I do not grow weary of writing”: Goldoni’s Reform of Italian Literature
Introduction
Enough Is Enough: The Italian Comic Complex
Reforming . . . from Without
“With the mask I’m Brighella, without the mask I’m a man”: Reforming . . . from Within
Conclusion: If Not Molière, Then What?
Four The Vichian Resurrection of Commedia dell’Arte: Reciprocating Modernity between Italy and France
Introduction
Vico’s Laughter
Giving and Receiving Modernity: A Shared Vichism
“À quoi bon le théâtre italien?”
Conclusion
Five Remembering Is Not Thinking: Croce, Gramsci, and Italian Intellectual Autobiography
Introduction
Beyond Laughter: For a “Reform” of Italian Thought
“A tall and blond Marx”: Antonio Labriola and Benedetto Croce
Rehearsing the Anti-Croce
The (Auto-)biography of a Nation
Conclusion
Conclusion: The Last Renaissance Man
Index
