| An analysis of the perception of the New World in Italian literature
and culture of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
"This study of the idea of America in the eighteenth century is
a remarkably mature book that deals with the great themes of history
and utopia, with the 'imaginaire' without ever abandoning the guidance
of philology."-Paolo Cherchi, The University of Chicago
"[A]n original contribution in a field already tilled by such prominent
historians as Antonello Gerbi, Rosario Romeo, and Sergio Landucci."-Gustavo
Costa, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
"With her elegant, but firm and lucid prose, Buccini reconstructs
this central intellectual debate of the Enlightenment. From Ludovico
Antonio Muratori to Giambattista Vico, from Rousseau to Voltaire,
from Goldoni to Pietro Chiari, the well-attained object of her exposition
is to clarify the various, and at times, contradictory, terms of perception
of the New World."-Francesco Guardiani, University of Toronto
"Without a doubt an interesting book of discovery on all levels:
discovery is its theme, but it also enabled me to discover areas
of intellectual experience which were hitherto unknown to me."-Giuseppe
F. Mazzotta, Yale University
The curiosity with which Europeans approached the New World was
reflected in the writings of Italian historians, missionaries, travelers,
and explorers, who described with fascination the customs of the
peoples they encountered in their travels. In this study Stefania
Buccini examines the representation of the Americas in Italian literature
during the Age of the Enlightenment.
She begins by analyzing the motivations and circumstances behind
the emergence of the myth of the "noble savage." Eighteenth-century
Italy had a strong orientation toward the more "advanced" American
societies of the Incas and the Aztecs, and these pre-Colombian civilizations
became the preferred myth, dissociated from any notion of wildness
and easily compatible with illuministic canons of progress. However,
a new America-revolutionary and democratic, animated by noble principles
of liberty and equality-was soon formed, onto which the old Europe
projected its dreams of renewal. As the New World came to be associated
with the English colonies, Benjamin Franklin, scientist, writer
of political and moral works, and founder of the new Republic, gained
the stature of an illuministic myth in Italy. Buccini finds that
the myths of the old and new Americas meshed and created a more
complex image of the New World for the Italians. |
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