Italian Politics and Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture

A transnational approach to Risorgimento culture’s contentious and exhilarating nation-building enterpriseKey FeaturesRe-imagines the parameters and duration of the relationship between the Risorgimento and British culture to revitalise critical engagement with the political dimension of nineteenth-century Anglo-Italian studiesMaps the emergence and evolution of major nineteenth-century forms and genres according to the reverberations of Italian politics that shaped the literary landscapeCovers a wide range of diverse sources, including fiction, poetry and polemical and journalistic non-fiction prose, adding to an existing critical debate focused on poetryRethinks nineteenth-century British political debates surrounding liberalism, the nation and the rights of citizens and refugees in light of the seismic geopolitical shift of Italian unificationCrossing borders, political divides and genres, this book examines the intersections among literary works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley and Wilkie Collins, journalism, parliamentary records and pamphlets, to establish Britain’s imaginative investment in the seismic geopolitical realignment of Italian unification.Revitalising critical narratives surrounding the mutually constitutive Anglo-Italian relationship, Cove argues that forging a new state demands both making and unmaking; as the Risorgimento re-mapped Europe’s geopolitical reality, it also reframed how the British saw themselves, their politics and their place within Europe.