Rispetti and sonnets : the Anglo-Italian context of Augusta Webster's later poetry (1881-1893)

Abstract

Images and pictures, thoughts and dreams of Italy rise everywhere from the pages of the nineteenth century. A renewed interest in Italy developed through the greater part of the Victorian period, and many major English poets and novelists of the time wrote at least one important work with an Italian subject or setting. George Eliot's Romola (1863) and Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book (1868) are prominent examples, but there are legions of less famous works with Italian themes and settings. Many of these works focused specifically on political issues and fervently supported Italy's republican and nationalist ideals which were striving to free the country from the oppression of a foreign power - ironically, since Britain was at the time at the height of its own powers as a colonizing nation. Yet the British government supported Italy's move towards Unification and welcomed a large number of political refugees who were in favour of the nationalist cause, such as Giuseppe Mazzini, Ugo Foscolo and Gabriele Rossetti. Arthur Hugh Clough's "Amours de Voyages" (1849), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows" (1851) and A. C. Swinburne's" A Song for Italy" (1867) all involve themselves in the Italian cause.