The Project Abstract

Abstract

The project “Reviving ‘The Liberal’: Literature and Politics between Britain and Italy, 1821-23” is connected to the long-standing research on Anglo-Italian interrelations carried out by the Centro Interuniversitario per lo Studio del Romanticismo (Interuniversity Centre for the study of Romanticism, CISR). Specifically, it originates from the desire to make the Romantic-era periodical The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South newly and more accessibly available to the scholarly community and the wider public. Integrating Digital Humanities and traditional scholarship with a strong investment in public engagement activities, the project promotes a richly diverse revitalization of this major document in nineteenth-century Anglo-Italian and European liberal culture.

“The Liberal” was the groundbreaking periodical published in London in 1822-23, but edited in Pisa and Genoa, by a group of intellectuals led by Leigh Hunt and including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, among others. Well known among Romantic-period scholars, it deserves to be more generally familiar as a crucial document in the history of political and cultural liberalism and Anglo-Italian intercultural contacts. It is also hugely relevant as the place of publication of several major Romantic literary works such as Byron’s The Vision of Judgement and William Hazlitt’s "My First Acquaintance with Poets".

The project starts from the fact that much of The Liberal’s full potential as a resource has remained unfulfilled because, for a long time, there has been no scholarly edition available; critical studies were either outmoded or too selective; and no comprehensive contextualizing work had been undertaken to reconstruct its position in 1820s culture in Britain and Italy. To revive and enhance this essential document soon after its bicentennial anniversary, our project has pooled the skills of a group of Italian scholars of English and British literature to offer a scholarly online edition that may pave the way for new critical investigations.

Concurrently, our project has produced a wide range of public engagement activities aimed at offering instruments and (online and in-person) cultural experiences aimed at enhancing awareness of British Romantic literature, Italian cultural and political history, and transnational cultural connections. To this end, the project aligns with the principles outlined in HEU CLUSTER 2 (Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society) and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan – Mission 1: Digitisation, Innovation, Competitiveness and Culture, with special attention to people-centred participation, fostering a sustainable and inclusive understanding of cultural heritage and its relationship to communities and society, as well as promoting access to and participation in cultural heritage through innovative approaches, new and emerging technologies, including digitisation and increased cultural literacy.

We have developed “Reviving The Liberal” with the aim of producing long-term transformative outcomes both within the discipline and for wider audiences, and as a way of engaging with ideas and principles still central to literary-cultural and socio-political debates at a national and international, and especially European, level.