Project

From Spectators to Spettatori: How Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals Shaped Modern Authorship in Pre-Unification Italy, 1727-1861

Code
1182025N
Duration
01 November 2024 → 31 October 2028
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Comparative literature studies
    • Early modern literature
    • Modern literature
    • Stylistics and textual analysis
    • Sociology of literary texts
Keywords
readership authorship periodicals
 
Project description

This project studies the reception of influential 18th-century English periodicals during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Italy. English periodicals, particularly satirical ones, were crucial to the expanding concept of authorship during the 18th century, and the pseudonymous personae under which periodicals were written played a key role in their success. English periodicals were also popular and widely imitated across Europe, with The Spectator being the most prominent and successful. While scholars have studied many of these imitators (especially in the Netherlands, France, and Germany), they have rarely considered Italian receptors. Consequently, and most importantly, scholars have failed to understand the crucial role that Italian periodicals, imitating English models, played in emerging Italian conceptions of modern authorship. This project will examine how Italian authors adapted The Spectator, adjusting the English model to Italian society and Italy’s idiosyncratic political context. The fragmented political, legal, and literary landscape of Italy, prior to national unification in 1861, offers a unique case study on the interactions between the literary market, the periodical press, and new conceptions of authorship. This opens up a new understanding of modern authorship in Italy and, potentially, insight into the dynamics of literary reception and imitation between divergent socio-cultural contexts.