In a letter to his brother, heading for Paris and London with Cesare Beccaria in the autumn of 1766, Pietro Verri famously wrote that their journey would help “build a bridge between Milan and Europe”. This metaphor was meant primarily to convey the full import of the cosmopolitan drive underlying the debates and works of the former “Caffettisti” (and their awareness of being a force for modernization and justice at work within the Milanese milieu). At the same time, it pointed to the notion of their being somewhat ‘marginal’, on political, social and geographical grounds, to the mainstream network of European Lumières, and to their determination to acquire full membership in the international community of knowledge. Focusing on Alessandro Verri’s letters from London, the first part of this paper aims to investigate the discursive tension, in his words, between the attraction of London’s cosmopolitan ‘centre’ (also a metonymy for the superior status of English culture) and the gravitational drawback represented by living in a ‘marginal’ region. This ambivalence is embodied, on the one hand, in the haunting of the brothers’ correspondence by Beccaria’s textual ghost; on the other hand, it is at the heart of Verri’s progressive agenda of intercultural mediation.

Letters from London : a “bridge” between Italy and Europe / L.A. De Michelis - In: The centre and the margins in eighteenth-century British and Italian cultures / [a cura di] F. O'Gorman, L. Guerra. - Prima edizione. - Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. - ISBN 9781443849524. - pp. 36-55

Letters from London : a “bridge” between Italy and Europe

L.A. De Michelis
Primo
2013

Abstract

In a letter to his brother, heading for Paris and London with Cesare Beccaria in the autumn of 1766, Pietro Verri famously wrote that their journey would help “build a bridge between Milan and Europe”. This metaphor was meant primarily to convey the full import of the cosmopolitan drive underlying the debates and works of the former “Caffettisti” (and their awareness of being a force for modernization and justice at work within the Milanese milieu). At the same time, it pointed to the notion of their being somewhat ‘marginal’, on political, social and geographical grounds, to the mainstream network of European Lumières, and to their determination to acquire full membership in the international community of knowledge. Focusing on Alessandro Verri’s letters from London, the first part of this paper aims to investigate the discursive tension, in his words, between the attraction of London’s cosmopolitan ‘centre’ (also a metonymy for the superior status of English culture) and the gravitational drawback represented by living in a ‘marginal’ region. This ambivalence is embodied, on the one hand, in the haunting of the brothers’ correspondence by Beccaria’s textual ghost; on the other hand, it is at the heart of Verri’s progressive agenda of intercultural mediation.
Cesare Beccaria ; Alessandro Verri ; Travel to Paris and London ; Italian perceptions of London; Italian Enlightenment
Settore L-LIN/10 - Letteratura Inglese
2013
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/234365
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