Imprinting Anglo- Italian Relations in The Liberal

A collection of essays by leading Romantic scholars celebrating the bicentenary of The Liberal and providing a fresh critical reflection on the periodical as a cultural and political Anglo-Italian transnational project.

When the first issue of The Liberal was published on 10 October 1822, the periodical was largely dismissed by the British press as a political project conceived by well-known and controversial figures (L. Hunt, P.B. Shelley, Lord Byron, W. Hazlitt, and Mary Shelley). They were all members of the so-called Pisan circle, an Anglo-Italian community of liberal writers aspiring to cultural and social reform. Even though The Liberal was addressed to an English public, it was entirely conceived in Italy, a country which had become a symbolic as well as a geographical space, playing a crucial role in defining the journal's aims and themes. This collection of essays examines the short and difficult life of the periodical, reassessing its cultural politics, its relationship to Italy, the controversial British reception, and its relevance to Romantic (and indeed contemporary) debates on Liberalism.

Autorentext

Lilla Maria Crisafulli is Alma Mater Professor at the University of Bologna. She is Honorary President of the Interuniversity Centre for Romantic Studies (CISR) and General Editor of La Questione Romantica. She has written extensively on British Romanticism and on the Cultural Relations between Italy and Great Britain. She is the author of monographic studies on P. B. Shelley.

Serena Baiesi is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna, where she teaches British Romanticism. Her research interests and publications are related to Romantic poetry, Leigh Hunt and political writings, Mary Shelley, Gothic literature, Romantic theatre and drama, Jane Austen, slavery literature.

Carlotta Farese is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna. She has written on the woman reader in nineteenth-century fiction, on Anglo-German cultural relations (Inchbald, Kotzebue, Wieland), on Jane Austen and the New Woman. Her current research interests focus on Austen's Mansfield Park, and the literary representation of disability in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Klappentext

When the first issue of The Liberal was published on 10 October 1822, the periodical was largely dismissed by the British press as a political project conceived by well-known and controversial figures (L. Hunt, P.B. Shelley, Lord Byron, W. Hazlitt, and Mary Shelley). They were all members of the so-called "Pisan circle", an Anglo-Italian community of liberal writers aspiring to cultural and social reform. Even though The Liberal was addressed to an English public, it was entirely conceived in Italy, a country which had become a symbolic as well as a geographical space, playing a crucial role in defining the journal's aims and themes. This collection of essays examines the short and difficult life of the periodical, reassessing its cultural politics, its relationship to Italy, the controversial British reception, and its relevance to Romantic (and indeed contemporary) debates on Liberalism.

Inhalt

Table of Contents - Preface: Imprinting Anglo-Italian Relations in The Liberal - The Liberal: historical and social environment". An Introduction - Cockney Imprint: The Liberal and its Reception, 1822 - What's in a name?: Shelley, the South, and the Liberal - Politics, Literature, and Leigh Hunt's Editorial Spirit in The Liberal - 'Letters from Abroad': Leigh Hunt and the Traveller's Epistle - Domestica facta recollected in Italy: Byron and The Liberal - "With flowing rhymes, a pleasant style and free": Byron's Translation of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore - William Hazlitt and the Ironies of Liberalism - The 'united voice of Italy': The Liberal and Mary Shelley's 'A Tale of the Passions' - "Back to the Future: The Liberal from Romanticism to Postmodernism. An Interview with Benjamin Ramm"