ASMI 2011: The Italian 'Character': Virtues and Vices - Part 2

15-12-11 Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, ASMI 2011: The Italian 'Character': Virtues and Vices - Part 2

Speaker: Lorella Zanardo

The debate on national identity is often associated with qualifying the defining traits of a nation's 'character'. The question of defining the Italian 'character' came sharply to the fore in the aftermath of Italy's unification, when the challenges of 'making Italians' raised questions about their national characteristics. Francesco De Sanctis saw in Machiavelli the 'precursor of the values of a nineteenth century liberal patriot, opening the way to individual autonomy, fatherland, nationality, liberty, equality, virility, work and seriousness'; in Guicciardini, however, De Sanctis also saw the signs of 'a more feeble and corrupt generation, who, while sharing Machiavelli's aspirations, lacked will and was unable to pursue them'(S. Patriarca, Italian Vices).

The 2011 ASMI Conference will explore representations and discursive constructions of the Italian 'character' in the light of the virtues and vices which have historically been attributed to or divined within it. We welcome inter- and cross-disciplinary contributions aimed at reflecting on how the Machiavellian model of republican virtue of citizens and 'the man of Guicciardini' shaped the way Italians imagined themselves from the Jacobin republics to the republic of parties. How has the idea of virtue -- and its opposite, vice -- shaped the construction and reading of the Italian character in modern and contemporary Italy? How has this been represented in literary writings, films and the press at home and abroad? How has the presence of the Church informed these representations in negative and positive ways? From the patriots of the Risorgimento to the tests of Fascism and war in the twentieth century, what virtues have the Italians called upon and what vices have they cultivated? How have traditional understandings and embodiments of these vices and virtues been challenged, displaced, broadened and redefined by developments in discourses and practices of citizenship, political 'impegno', and feminist and sexual politics? How have notions of the 'Italian character' been rendered inherently unstable, fissured, complicated and enriched by perceived regional differences, or by internal migration and immigration? To what extent, in what contexts and to what end do traditional (problematic? nostalgic? idealistic?) stereotypes of the Italian 'character' still hold purchase today?

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Education

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