Tra nostalgia preindustriale, ghildismo e rinascita nazionale

Il pensiero sociale di Ruskin nel dibattito culturale italiano

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Abstract

Ruskin’s social criticism, which in Unto This Last (1862) harshly condemned the effects of industrialism by mythologizing medieval age and craftmanship, had a wide influence on social reformers of various political orientations. While his work as an art critic was promptly received in the Italian cultural debate, his social criticism found little audience, at least until the turn of the century, and anyway not in the sphere of economic and sociological culture. In this contribution I examine how the circulation of Ruskin’s social thought in the Italian cultural debate between the 19th and 20th centuries was inscribed in the renewed interest in the social function of art, advocated in the Florentine literary journal Il Marzocco with particular reference to the work of L. Tolstoj by young intellectuals such as U. Ojetti, A. Orvieto, and E. Corradini, as well as established critics as A. Conti.


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Published Dec. 15, 2020 | Language: it

Keywords Nationalism • Il Marzocco • National heritage • John Ruskin • Transcultural history • Lev Tolstoj’s reception in Italy • Unto this Last

Copyright © 2020 Laura Cerasi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-487-5/022


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