Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism

This article examines some important  but neglected charcteristics of the discourse on "resorgimento", "indolence" and "regneration"  during the central years of the  Italian movement for a unification, the Resorgimento,  between 1815 and 1861. The author, Sylvana Patriarca,  argues that recasting the study of the discouse of the resorgimento requires also an explicit engagement with the issue of gender, a subject to which recent studies of nationalism have devoted considerable attention in other national cases, but whose analysis in the case of Italy awaits a much fuller treatment.