Performing National Identity: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions. (Internationale Forschungen Zur Allgemeinen & Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft)

329 Pages·2007·2.63 MB·English

by  Manfred Pfister

Performing National Identity
Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions
114 Internationale Forschungen zur
Allgemeinen und
Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft
In Verbindung mit
Norbert Bachleitner (Universität Wien), Dietrich Briesemeister (Friedrich
Schiller-Universität Jena), Francis Claudon (Université Paris XII), Joachim
Knape (Universität Tübingen), Klaus Ley (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
Mainz), John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt University), Alfred Noe (Universität
Wien), Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin), Sven H. Rossel (Universität
Wien)
herausgegeben von
Alberto Martino
(Universität Wien)
Redaktion: Ernst Grabovszki
Anschrift der Redaktion:
Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Berggasse 11/5, A-1090 Wien
Performing National Identity
Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions
Edited by
Manfred Pfister and Ralf Hertel
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
Cover image:
David Hockney: Flight into Italy—Swiss Landscape, 1962,
Oil on canvas, 72 x 72'', ©David Hockney
Cover design:
Pier Post
Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions
de “ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents -
Prescriptions pour la permanence”.
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements
for permanence”.
Die Reihe „Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden
Literaturwissenschaft“ wird ab dem Jahr 2005 gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi,
Amsterdam – New York und dem Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin herausgegeben.
Die Veröffentlichungen in deutscher Sprache erscheinen im Weidler Buchverlag,
alle anderen bei Editions Rodopi.
From 2005 onward, the series „Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen
und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft“ will appear as a joint publication by
Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York and Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin. The
German editions will be published by Weidler Buchverlag, all other publications
by Editions Rodopi.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2314-7
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents
Manfred Pfister
Introduction: Performing National Identity 9

1. Early Modern Literary Exchanges
Werner von Koppenfels
‘Stripping up his sleeves like some juggler’: Giordano Bruno
in England, or, The Philosopher as Stylistic Mountebank 31

Ralf Hertel
‘Mine Italian brain ’gan in your duller Britain operate most vilely’:
Cymbeline and the Deconstruction of Anglo-Italian Differences 45

2. Italian and English Art in Dialogue
John Peacock
Inigo Jones and the Reform of Italian Art 65

Alison Yarrington
‘Made in Italy’: Sculpture and the Staging of National Identities
at the International Exhibition of 1862 75

3. Travelling Images
Barbara Schaff
Italianised Byron – Byronised Italy 103

Fabienne Moine
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Italian Poetry:
Constructing National Identity and Shaping the Poetic Self 123

Stephen Gundle
The ‘Bella Italiana’ and the ‘English Rose’: Reflections
on Two National Typologies of Feminine Beauty 137
4. Political Negotiations
Pamela Neville-Sington
Sex, Lies, and Celluloid: That Hamilton Woman and British Attitudes
towards the Italians from the Risorgimento to the Second World War 159

Peter Vassallo
Italian Culture versus British Pragmatics: The Maltese Scenario 171

David Forgacs
Gramsci’s Notion of the ‘Popular’ in Italy and Britain:
A Tale of Two Cultures 179

Carla Dente
Personal Memory / Cultural Memory: Identity and Difference
in Scottish-Italian Migrant Theatre 197

5. Contemporary Mediations
Claudio Visentin
The Theatre of the World: British-Italian Identities
on the Tourism Stage 215

Judith Munat
Bias and Stereotypes in the Media: The Performance of British
and Italian National Identities 221

Sara Soncini
Re-locating Shakespeare: Cultural Negotiations
in Italian Dubbed Versions of Romeo and Juliet 235

Mariangela Tempera
Something to Declare: Italian Avengers and British Culture
in La ragazza con la pistola and Appuntamento a Liverpool 249

Anthony King
English Fans and Italian Football: Towards a Transnational
Relationship 265
Greg Walker
Selling England (and Italy) by the Pound: Performing National
Identity in the First Phase of Progressive Rock: Jethro Tull,
King Crimson, and PFM 287

Gisela Ecker
Zuppa Inglese and Eating up Italy: Intercultural Feasts and Fantasies 307

Notes on Contributors 323

Manfred Pfister
Introduction: Performing National Identity
I.
National identity is not some naturally given or metaphysically sanctioned
racial or territorial essence that only needs to be conceptualised or spelt out in
discursive texts; it emerges from, takes shape in, and is constantly defined
and redefined in individual and collective performances. It is in perform-
ances—ranging from the scenarios of everyday interactions to ‘cultural per-
formances’ (Milton Singer) such as pageants, festivals, political manifesta-
tions, or sports, to the artistic performances of music, dance, theatre, litera-
ture, or more recent media—that cultural identity and a sense of nationhood
are fashioned.1 National identity is not an essence one is born with but some-
thing acquired in and through performances.
Particularly important here are intercultural performances and trans-
actions, and that not only in a colonial and postcolonial dimension, where
such performative aspects have already been considered, but also in inner-
European transactions.2 ‘Englishness’ or ‘Britishness’ and Italianità, the sub-
ject of this anthology, are staged both within each culture and, more impor-
tantly, in joint performances of difference across cultural borders. Performing
difference highlights differences that ‘make a difference’; it ‘draws a line’
between self and other—boundary lines that are, however, constantly being
redrawn and renegotiated, and remain instable and shifting.
This book has resulted from the first of a series of four conferences In
Medias Res: British-Italian Cultural Transactions, which was held at the
Freie Universität Berlin from 31 March to 2 April 2006 with the generous
support of the British Academy, the University of Pisa, and the DFG-spon-
sored ‘Sonderforschungsbereich 447: Kulturen des Performativen’. Its con-
tributors from Great Britain, Italy, Malta, France, and Germany, all of them
members of, or affiliated to, the international In Medias Res research group
headed by Martin Stannard (Leicester), focus on how Italians have performed
their Italianità to and for British audiences and, respectively, how Brits have
performed their Britishness to and for Italian audiences from the Renaissance

1. See Traditional India: Structure and Change, ed. by Milton Singer (Philadelphia: Ameri-
can Folklore Society, 1959).
2. See Fremdheitserfahrung und Fremdheitsdarstellung in okzidentalen Kulturen: Theorie-
ansätze, Medien/Textsorten, Diskursformen, ed. by Bernd Lenz and Hans-Jürgen Lüse-
brink (Passau: Rothe, 1999).