Strategie di divulgazione scientifica e nation building nel primo Ottocento

Abstract

Abstract The history of popular science in early nineteenth-century Italy constitutes a broad but little investigated research field. This article aims to explore the topic from the viewpoint of the pre-unitarian authors who contributed to the growth of this publishing sector. To shed light on the relationship between their narrative strategies and the nation-building process, it focuses on a major case study: the analysis of the role played by unexpected events in several travel memoirs written by Francesco Cusani Confalonieri, a historian, publisher and Lombard patriot (1802–1879). To capture the attention of the reader, and determined to both delight and instruct, the author resorted in two instances to the device of self-narration, based on his travel journals. In 1838, he published „Remembrances of a Trip in Bavaria, Saxony and Prussia“ in a periodical that he had established for young people entitled „Historical and Picturesque Museum for the Youth“. Later, between 1846 and 1847, he printed his first original work, addressed to an adult audience: „Historical and Statistical Memoirs“ of Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands and Greece, countries that he had visited in 1840. By examining the ways in which order and disorder were integrated into these two texts, the study underlines the connection between Cusani’s narrative choices and his cultural objectives, also thanks to research on his personal letters, hitherto untouched. It thus shows that, through the writing process, the unexpected events encountered by the narrator during his trips underwent a transformation: from constitutive aspects of the scientific experience to romantic elements that the writer deemed crucial to earn the favour of his readers and convey to them new historic-geographical knowledge as well as a vision of the world in line with his liberal ideals.