Introduzione
Francesco Benigno, E. Igor Mineo
Storia della letteratura italiana e storia d’Italia
Stefano Jossa
History of Italian literature and History of Italy
The essay reconstructs the longue durée of De Sanctis’s
legacy in the Italian pedagogical tradition, showing the
extent to which his Storia della letteratura italiana has
permeated the relationship between literature and national
identity in Italy, even when it was simply reasserted, or
betrayed. Things have changed since the 1990s, especially
with the advent of media power in politics, but Italians
continue to be educated within the mythology of a
literature that constructs the nation, which stems from De
Sanctis’s lesson: is there any way to make a step forward
without renouncing the privileged position of literature in
the formation of Italian public discourse?
Parole chiave: Letteratura italiana; Storia d’Italia;
De Sanctis; Identità nazionale
Keywords: Italy; Literature; Italy, History; De
Sanctis; National Identity
Famiglia, famiglie, identità italiana
Giorgia Alessi
Family, families, Italian identity
The essay critically examines the origins and the
explanatory value of the commonplace according to
which some Italian «evils» would be tied to the excessive
weight of family solidarity which, in its degenerate form,
originated a long-lasting structure, i.e. «familism». Such
an idea is reinforced by the dualist representations of
Europe which – since the studies of the Cambridge group
in the 1960’s and subsequent variations – contrasted a
Mediterranean area characterized by an extended family
and a young age of marriage, less modernized, with a
North-Western reality characterized by a precocious
affirmation of the nuclear family and a later age of
marriage, the driving force of economic development and
competitive individualism. The author complicates and
falsifies such a picture, pointing out on the one hand the
absence of a unique Italian family model and the diffusion
of the nuclear family in Southern Italy only; on the other
hand – on the basis of women’s studies – the importance.
in the history of Italian society, of further elements,
relatively independent from family morphology: e.g.
family and patronage ties, the weight of primogeniture,
the role of the dowry, the sharecropping character of
agriculture. If we want to find out the significant elements
of the Italian «peculiarity», these are more likely to be
found in the long-lasting political and cultural role of the
Church in the countryside, and the low level of literacy
and information.
Parole chiave: Famiglia; Familismo; Identità italiana
Keywords: Family; Familism; Italian Identity;
Modernization
Una «minoranza esigua» e virtuosa: intellettuali e storia d’Italia
Marcello Verga
Intellectuals between the Enlightenment
and the Novecento
In the Italian public discourse and a large part of the
historiography on modern Italy the study of intellectuals
has represented a privileged perspective on the nation’s
history. The essay aims to illuminate the intellectual
and political origins of such a vision of national history,
with particular reference to the historiography on the
eighteenth century.
Parole chiave: Intellettuali; Storia d’Italia;
Risorgimento; Storiografia
Keywords: Intellectuals; Risorgimento; Italy
History; Historiography
Costituzionalismo dei beni comuni
Marco Fioravanti
Constitutionalism and Commons
The paper explores recent trends in the legal and
historical culture of both Europe and the Anglo-
American world. Attention has turned, in Italy and
elsewhere, to the constitutional dimension of private
law, to collective properties and to the dynamics of the
commons. This essay also analyzes, through the lens of
legal and constitutional history, the dialectic between the
bourgeois individualistic model, postulating the absolute
power of the individual over goods, and the structure of
collective properties (medieval and modern) based on
the primacy of the community and the res. It eventually
seeks to test the role of this dichotomy in contemporary
society characterized by the crisis of modern legal forms
and the emergence of alternative categories – such as,
precisely, that of «the commons» – in order to rethink the
foundations of democracy.
Parole chiave: Costituzionalismo; Beni comuni/
Bene comune; Proprietà; Sovranità
Keywords: Constitutionalism; Commons/commonwealth;
Property; Sovereignty