The chivalric subject exerts a major attraction over 19th and 20th century Italian writers, despite the progressive exhaustion of the epic poems. This article aims to use the chivalric revival as a filter to focus on the evolution of the geographical paradigms that took place throughout the modern and contemporary literature. It will be examined first the transition from a supranational idea of Christianity to the current cultural and political concept of Europe, occurring between the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. This phenomenon gave rise to a new class of secular writers, as we can clearly see in the novel Le confessioni d’un italiano by Ippolito Nievo: the foundation of a unified Italy replaced the ancien régime and its feudal ideology, for which poems like Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata represented a manifesto. This essay will also try to show that Nievo’s nationalistic proposal became obsolete in the 20th century, as globalisation determined Italo Calvino’s cosmopolitan and Ariostean fiction as well as Gianni Celati’s, Gesualdo Bufalino’s, and Giuseppe Pederiali’s nostalgic chivalric rewritings. In the 1990s, the latter authors rejected the homologation of the post-modern society and turned their gaze to the regional or municipal homeland where they recognized their roots, both linguistically and anthropologically.

L’articolo intende mettere a fuoco l’evoluzione dei paradigmi geografici che si sono succeduti nella modernità letteraria, utilizzando come filtro le riscritture della materia cavalleresca. In primo luogo viene analizzato il passaggio dall’idea sovranazionale di Cristianità a quella di Europa, che prende piede anche a livello politico nel periodo tra la Riforma e l’Illuminismo, quando si arriva alla creazione di una classe di letterati pienamente laici. Un fenomeno che emerge con evidenza nelle Confessioni d’un italiano, dove la fondazione dell’Italia è subordinata al superamento dell’immaginario religioso-feudale consolidato da secoli, che aveva eletto poemi come il Furioso e la Liberata a manifesti ideologici dell’ancien régime. L’impostazione nazionalistica di Nievo si rivela però superata nel Novecento, quando la globalizzazione genera, da un lato, il cosmopolitismo di Calvino, dall’altro le operazioni restaurative e nostalgiche di autori come Celati, Bufalino e Pederiali: che culturalmente, linguisticamente e antropologicamente non si riconoscono più nella grande patria dell’Italia, ma nella piccola patria dove mettono radici, intesa come l’unico argine da opporre a un mondo sempre più anonimo e omologato.

Savio, D., Cristianità, Europa e piccole patrie. Le geografie cavalleresche nella modernità letteraria, <<STUDIUM>>, 2020; 116 (2): 224-249 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/152974]

Cristianità, Europa e piccole patrie. Le geografie cavalleresche nella modernità letteraria

Savio, Davide
2020

Abstract

The chivalric subject exerts a major attraction over 19th and 20th century Italian writers, despite the progressive exhaustion of the epic poems. This article aims to use the chivalric revival as a filter to focus on the evolution of the geographical paradigms that took place throughout the modern and contemporary literature. It will be examined first the transition from a supranational idea of Christianity to the current cultural and political concept of Europe, occurring between the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. This phenomenon gave rise to a new class of secular writers, as we can clearly see in the novel Le confessioni d’un italiano by Ippolito Nievo: the foundation of a unified Italy replaced the ancien régime and its feudal ideology, for which poems like Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata represented a manifesto. This essay will also try to show that Nievo’s nationalistic proposal became obsolete in the 20th century, as globalisation determined Italo Calvino’s cosmopolitan and Ariostean fiction as well as Gianni Celati’s, Gesualdo Bufalino’s, and Giuseppe Pederiali’s nostalgic chivalric rewritings. In the 1990s, the latter authors rejected the homologation of the post-modern society and turned their gaze to the regional or municipal homeland where they recognized their roots, both linguistically and anthropologically.
2020
Italiano
Savio, D., Cristianità, Europa e piccole patrie. Le geografie cavalleresche nella modernità letteraria, <<STUDIUM>>, 2020; 116 (2): 224-249 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/152974]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10807/152974
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