Art, Literature, the Press, and Exile: Relationships between the United Kingdom and the Italian Risorgimento (9/9-11/2011)

Registration is now open for Art, Literature, the Press, and Exile: Relationships between the United Kingdom and the Italian Risorgimento, an international conference to be held 9-11 September 2011 at Bagni di Lucca, Italy.

The conference commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy the Fondazione Michel de Montaigne, based in Bagni di Lucca, in collaboration with the University of Pisa and the Historical Institute of Lucca, and will take place in the former Anglican Church (now the Municipal Library) of Bagni di Lucca. It considers the representation of Italy in the work of nineteenth century British writers and examines perceptions and rationalizations of Italian aspirations for unity by British writers, artists, journalists and politicians. This is one of a series of Conferences at Bagni di Lucca which have concentrated upon nineteenth-century British literary figures who lived in Tuscany and particularly those associated with Bagni itself.

Presentations include, but are not limited to

• “'Stirring the waters roughly' Charles Lever, Blackwood’s Magazine and the Risorgimento"
• "Lord Byron fails to finish 'The Prophecy of Dante'"
• "George Eliot’s Romola as an expression of a cultural Risorgimento"
• "British Women Writers and the Risorgimento: Isabella Blagden between salons and political involvement"
• "Friends of Italy: The Risorgimento in Victorian Great Britain"
• "'Italy for the Italians': Jessie White, the Italian Risorgimento and the Formation of Victorian Identity
• "'Buy it, buy it! Fine statue! … very cheap'- Emigration to Great Britain from the Lucca Province in the 19th Century"
• "Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Francesco Dall’Ongaro"
• "Arthur Hugh Clough and the Roman Republic of 1849"
• "Caricatures of leading figures of the Risorgimento as seen by the original Vanity Fair (1869-1878)"
• "Dickens and Gissing in Italy before and after the Unity"

For the full program, visit http://www.fondazionemontaigne.it/files/montaigne__programma_2011.pdf

For registration information, visit http://www.fondazionemontaigne.it/index.html