The chapter examines the fiction by Giovanni/John Ruffini (1807-1881), an Italian patriot and exile that later became a successful author of six novels, all written in English. Following the publication of his first two books, Lorenzo Benoni (1853) and Doctor Antonio (1855), in the middle years of the XIX century Ruffini ranked among the most acclaimed English novelists, known and praised by Dickens, Gladstone and Carlyle. However, after having enjoyed a period of popularity also in Italy, his name almost completely disappeared from both the English and the Italian literary canons. This was probably due to the supposed “spurious” nature of his works, constantly hovering in a space “between”: between different cultures, different languages and different genres. Only recently has Ruffini’s production started to regain critical attention, thanks to the works of scholars such as Allan Conrad Christensen and Martino Marazzi, which directly question Ruffini’s marginality as a “minor” author. The essay aims to contribute to this process of critical reassessment, highlighting some neglected cultural aspects of Ruffini’s production and political credo. From a diegetic point of view, his four novels set in the years of the Risorgimento – Lorenzo Benoni (1853), Doctor Antonio (1855), Lavinia (1860) and Vincenzo (1863) – form a long fictional account of the Italian political history and fight for independence from the late Twenties to the early Sixties. The prominence given to the patriotic commitment and political purpose – that of informing and winning the English public to the cause of Italian unity – reveals the role Ruffini played as a cultural “mediator” between Italy and England in the Fifties. While only partly championing the Mazzinian doctrine, his novels, and especially Doctor Antonio, testify to contemporary discourses on the Italians and more importantly shed light on the concurrent process of Victorian identity construction whose discussion intensified in the central years of the century. The fact that the peak of English enthusiasm for the Italian liberation coincided with the heyday of the debate on Englishness further confirms not only England’s political contribution to the Risorgimento, but the crucial place that Italy and Italians held in Victorian self-fashioning.

"An Italy independent and one": Giovanni (John) Ruffini, England, and the Italian Risorgimento

ANTINUCCI, Raffaella
2015-01-01

Abstract

The chapter examines the fiction by Giovanni/John Ruffini (1807-1881), an Italian patriot and exile that later became a successful author of six novels, all written in English. Following the publication of his first two books, Lorenzo Benoni (1853) and Doctor Antonio (1855), in the middle years of the XIX century Ruffini ranked among the most acclaimed English novelists, known and praised by Dickens, Gladstone and Carlyle. However, after having enjoyed a period of popularity also in Italy, his name almost completely disappeared from both the English and the Italian literary canons. This was probably due to the supposed “spurious” nature of his works, constantly hovering in a space “between”: between different cultures, different languages and different genres. Only recently has Ruffini’s production started to regain critical attention, thanks to the works of scholars such as Allan Conrad Christensen and Martino Marazzi, which directly question Ruffini’s marginality as a “minor” author. The essay aims to contribute to this process of critical reassessment, highlighting some neglected cultural aspects of Ruffini’s production and political credo. From a diegetic point of view, his four novels set in the years of the Risorgimento – Lorenzo Benoni (1853), Doctor Antonio (1855), Lavinia (1860) and Vincenzo (1863) – form a long fictional account of the Italian political history and fight for independence from the late Twenties to the early Sixties. The prominence given to the patriotic commitment and political purpose – that of informing and winning the English public to the cause of Italian unity – reveals the role Ruffini played as a cultural “mediator” between Italy and England in the Fifties. While only partly championing the Mazzinian doctrine, his novels, and especially Doctor Antonio, testify to contemporary discourses on the Italians and more importantly shed light on the concurrent process of Victorian identity construction whose discussion intensified in the central years of the century. The fact that the peak of English enthusiasm for the Italian liberation coincided with the heyday of the debate on Englishness further confirms not only England’s political contribution to the Risorgimento, but the crucial place that Italy and Italians held in Victorian self-fashioning.
2015
9781137297716
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11367/19799
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