Lumières vs. Illuminismo: the French and Italian Enlightenments in Conflict

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Robert Fajen

Project Description

The relationship between French and Italian Enlightenments can be described - at least at first sight ­- as the archetype of the conflict between center and periphery. Their respective importance seems clear: in the decades between 1740 and 1790, Paris is regarded across Europe as the imaginary center stage of an epochal discourse that reevaluates and reorganizes the knowledge of the world. This can be seen for example on the one hand with the project of the century, the Encyclopédie, whose prestige relies among other things on the fact that it is a Parisian undertaking, and on the other hand, with the singular figure of Voltaire, who was seen for a long time as the most important, that is, Parisian, actor in the transnational literary field, whether he was in Potsdam, Geneva or Ferney. In Italy, or more precisely in the perception of the Italian literati, the dominance of the French culture of the Enlightenment is undisputed, and at the same time a subject of heated debate, characterized by resentment, defiance, or blind admiration. Cultural and social transformations are seen as the results of a 'dangerous' transalpine influence; but the intellectual and aesthetic experiments of the philosophes are also a fascinating fact, which cannot be escaped. This ambivalence is further complicated by the Italian polycentrism: the reception of the French Enlightenment is different in the various cities and states of Italy; obviously Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, or Rousseau are read differently in Milan, the center of the Italian Enlightenment in the narrower sense of the term, than they are in Naples, Florence, Turin, or Venice. On the other hand, the culture of the Italian peninsula appears in the French - that is, Parisian - perspective from the center as remote, decadent and marginal.
 

With the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and the construction of their own 'young' classics, the old rivalry with Italy was for French writers finally decided in favor of their own culture. Authors such as Voltaire or Diderot present Italian literature essentially as a manifestation of their past greatness, while typifying the present production in the neighboring country as a sterile and backward-looking quantité négligable, even if, as in the case of Voltaire's adaptation of Maffei, Mérope or of Diderot's adaptation of Goldoni, Le fils naturel, it could be used productively for their own purposes. The philosophes are all the more annoyed by innovations from the pretended periphery, which obviously can not be ignored because of their scope: the ambivalent reception of Cesare Beccaria's treatise Dei delitti e delle pene shows this very clearly. After an initial enthusiasm for his ideas in Paris, interest in the young Milanese rapidly declines, perhaps because the consistency of his political-juridical thinking exceeds that of the philosophes. Another key figure that illustrates the ambivalent status of Italian - more precisely, here Neapolitan - culture in Paris is the Abbé Galiani. Here too, the question arises as to what extent Galiani, in his long-standing contact with the circle of Diderot, Grimm and d'Holbach, is concerned in his writings with the above-mentioned conflicts between the outward-directed, singular-centric enlightenment in France and the plural "reacting" enlightenments in Italy. Special attention will be paid to the correspondence between Galiani and Louise d'Épinay, which documents particularly vividly the communication between the Neapolitan 'periphery' and the Parisian 'center'. The project is still in the initial phase and will be a long-term undertaking.