Ruins past modernity in Italy, 1744-1836 - WebLearn

(previously SVEC)
Ruins past
modernity in Italy, 1744-1836
SABRINA FERRI
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Ruins past: modernity in Italy, 1744-1836
SABRINA FERRI
In an era haunted by its past, modern Europe sought to break with the old;
the future and the new became the ideal. In Italy however, where the remains
of the past dominated the landscape, ruins were a token both of decadence
and of the inspiring legacy of tradition. Sabrina Ferri proposes a counternarrative to the European story of progress by focusing on the oftenmarginalized and distinctive case of Italy.
For Italians, ruins uncovered the creative potential of the past, transforming it
into an inexhaustible source of philosophical speculation and poetic invention
whilst simultaneously symbolizing decay, loss and melancholy. Focusing on
the representation of ruins by Italian writers, scientists, and artists between
the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sabrina Ferri explores the
culture of the period and traces Italy’s complex relationship with its past.
Combining the analysis of major works, from Vico’s New science to
Leopardi’s Canti, with that of archival sources and little-studied materials
such as scientific travel journals, letters, and political essays, the author
reveals how:
 the ruin became a figure for Italy’s uneasy transition into modernity;
 the interplay between reflections on the processes of history and
speculations on the laws of nature shaped the country’s sense of the
past and its vision of the future;
 the convergence of narratives depicting historical and natural change
influenced both the creative arts and the emerging sciences of
geology, biology, and archaeology;
 the temporal crisis at the dawn of the nineteenth century called into
question traditional models for investigating the past and
understanding the present.
Contents
Introduction
1. ‘The great fragments of antiquity’: ruins and recovery of the past
in Giambattista Vico’s New science
2. ‘The ruined cities lie desolate’: natural catastrophe and historical
change in eighteenth-century Italy
3. Time of nature, time of man: ruins and the materiality of the
historical imagination
4. Melancholies of the modern: nature and history in the late
eighteenth-century Picturesque
5. The ghostly ruins of Neoclassicism: Alessandro Verri’s Roman
nights and the posthumous life of the ancient
6. The shipwrecks of time: Giacomo Leopardi’s poetics of ruins
Epilogue: a glance back
Bibliography
Index
Sabrina Ferri is assistant professor of Italian Studies at the University of
Notre Dame, Indiana. Her research encompasses Italian literature,
philosophy, science, and visual arts of the long eighteenth century, with a
focus on the transition to modernity and Italy’s place in both European and
transatlantic contexts.
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, December 2015
ISBN 978-0-7294-1171-4, xii+258 pages, 9 ills, £60 / €90 / $95
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