Abstract
Germaine de Staël’s character Corinne also bears a resemblance to Eleonora Fonesca Pimentel who supported the revolutionary cause for Italian independence. Scholars have traditionally read Corinne as a revolutionary metaphor for Staël’s protest against Napoleonic hegemony, but Corinne’s identification with Italy over England and her lover, Oswald, Lord Nevil, suggests that the early cause of Italian independence was equally important to the author whose setting includes Naples as a sacrosanct location for Italian culture. Corinne visits the grave of Virgil, author of the Aeneid, and she and Nevil plan to ascend the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. In fact, Corinne, though half-English, rejects the English in favour of her homeland and Italian mother’s ancestry. The British staunch support of the Bourbon monarchy of Maria Carolina and Ferdinand was facilitated through the close personal contact of Emma Hamilton who served as the queen’s lady in waiting. However, Maria Carolina’s connection with Pimentel was equally important to the later Neapolitan Revolution of 1799. In fact, Pimentel may well have been persuaded to join the revolutionary cause through her contact with Arcadia, an elite cultural which Staël cites in the crowning of Corinne at the Capitol in Rome. In Naples, the organization of Arcadia merged with the Masonic lodge, an offshoot of which later evolved into the revolutionary Carbonari during the Napoleonic Wars. Queen Maria Carolina joined the organization of Arcadia and defied its egalitarian republican tendencies in her attempt to maintain a firm grasp over her kingdom through authoritarian rule.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Emma Hamilton, Queen Maria Carolina, Germaine de Stael, Eleonora Pimentel
