City and Nation in the Italian Unification: The National Festivals of Dante Alighieri (Italian and Italian American Studies) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

This book is the study of the first national festival of modern Italy, the Sixth Centenary Festival of Dante Alighieri in 1865. The first national congregation of Italian civil society as well as ideological factions from the recently united cities and provinces, Dante Centenary was denominated alternatively as a national, European, and secular festa, which ultimately materialized as an eclectic Italian monument with extraordinary political, social and cultural significant. The study consists of an historical reconstruction of the event based on the discovery of a mass of un-catalogued and unpublished documents left by the organizers. The narrative poses the Centenary as a platform upon which an alternative definition of Italian national identity emerged, one based on a longue durée of Florentine Cultural nationalism that opposed the Piedmontese territorial nationalism.