The Italian Risorgimento and Sicilian Popular Balladry: The Problem of ‘Deep Images’ and Popular Reception
Ben Kehoe
The recent cultural history of the Italian Risorgimento has claimed that it was a ‘mass movement’ which affected lives far greater number soon-to-be Italians than traditional revisionist and Marxist narratives have assumed. This new has, however, left certain questions unanswered. There still been little attempt to explore popular receptions national discourses, what politics meant mass ‘ordinary' people who lived through these seismic changes. paper seeks ways in one particular audience – rural urban illiterate province Palermo responded to, attempted make sense of, national-patriotic discourses were articulated ephemeral street literature oratory Giuseppe Garibaldi Palermo. research makes use textual transcriptions oral balladry, collected published by Sicilian folk-scholars at end nineteenth century, investigate how received internalized on nationhood. An analysis language song-texts reveals much imagery symbolism nationhood, elaborated various discursive practices, rebuffed traditional, familiar idiom culture employed representation events 1860. will propose possessed its own internal autonomous set images narrative features, people’s official-patriotic shaped descriptive norms balladry.
European History Quarterly