October Lecture with Sante Matteo, Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies, Miami University, Oxford, OH

The ICI is excited to host Professor Sante Matteo, Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies to present "Garibaldi and Pinocchio: Risorgimento with No Strings Attached?"

Abstract:

After decades of agitation and insurgency, known as the Risorgimento (Resurgence), and following two Wars of Independence (1848 and 1859), the patchwork of states that made up the Italian Peninsula finally became a unified nation in 1861.

In 1882, the Kingdom of Italy and the first “Italians” turned twenty-one. What coming-of-age presents did they get for their birth year?

One keepsake that would become known, adopted, and loved throughout the world was a puppet with no strings: Pinocchio, whose adventures were published that year.

Another birth-year gift to the country was the celebration and elevation to the Pantheon of Great Italians of the Risorgimento’s best-known hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi, upon his death in 1882.

As new Italians celebrated the young country’s coming of age, millions of others emigrated, severing their ties to their homeland to start lives elsewhere.

When new states are created, old strings to previous allegiances and identities are severed, and new strings to different conditions and requirements take their place. The Adventures of Pinocchio, along with Garibaldi’s real-life adventures as the Hero of Two Worlds, serve as manuals of how to “create Italians.”