Images of Italy in nineteenth century Franc

In the Nineteenth Century, representatives of an intellectual elite in France exhibited an interest in Italy that was distinguished by a vitality unknown since the days of the Renaissance. During the Revolution and in the subsequent years of the first Empire and the Restoration, French politicians and writers focused on Italy: the former wanted to learn from its history or dreamed of conquering it, and the latter--including Chateaubriand, Mme de Stael, Stendhal and G. Sand--traveled to the Peninsula seemingly intent on escaping the rationality, conformism, and sexism of the French society.;Through a rhetorical analysis of political and literary texts, I argue that the authors' reflections on Italy ironically reveal their attitudes towards their own nation. Moreover, this study claims that the creation of Italian images was influenced by 19th-century French religious, social and political ideologies, including anticlericalism, the theory of Translatio Imperii, and the theory of climates.;The first chapter reviews a number of canonical French works written about Italy before the Nineteenth Century. My aim is to show how the themes and topics developed in these earlier texts strongly influenced the Romantic's image of the Peninsula.;The succeeding chapters are dedicated to the three major motifs I have detected in the nineteenth-century writings about Italy. I have found that several French intellectuals see the Peninsula as a metaphorical sibling, and express the inherent emotions found in such a relationship. At various times Italy is seen as the older sister, the beloved sister and the rival sister. Inasmuch as it had passed on to France the deeds and views of the ancients, Italy is the older sister. It is loved for its artistic treasures, and also for the Italian people's purportedly native sense of naturel and individualism. Finally, it is humiliated by the Napoleonic conquests, the adherents to the theory of climates, and the proponents of anticlericalism.;This study contends that one reveals his or her own ideologies through the interpretation of the other. By studying the images of Italy rendered by selected nineteenth-century French politicians and writers--all of whom participated in, deliberated on and criticized a France that was in constant political and ideological fluctuation--I hope to articulate the ideologies of those writers.