Nation of the Risorgimento : Kinship, Sanctity, and Honour in the Origins of Unified Italy

This book is a translation of La Nazione del Risorgimento, one of the most important and influential works on modern Italian history published in recent years. It analyses the aspects of the ideas of nationhood and patriotism that impassioned and energized the Italian Risorgimento movement during the first half of the nineteenth century. Employing an innovative interdisciplinary approach that examines the cultural production and consumption of the period, the author has challenged the orthodoxies of post-1945 Italian historiography. He explores the developing themes that gave strength to the idea of the Italian ‘nation’, and in the process persuasively explains why so many young men and women were willing to lay down their lives for the ‘patria’ and its independence.

Alberto Mario Banti is Full Professor of Cultural History at the University of Pisa. His research has been devoted to the study of the idea of nation in nineteenth-century Italy and Europe; to the history of Western mentalities and cultures; and to the analysis of mass culture in twentieth-century USA. His published books include, among others, Éros et Vertu. Le corps de femmes de Watteau à Manet (2018) and Wonderland. La cultura di massa da Walt Disney ai Pink Floyd (2017).