Dante, 'The prophet of liberty' : the mainstream ideological paradigm in Romantic Britain vis-a-vis Isaiah Berlin's Reflections on liberty

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that Italian literature captivated the English mind during the Romantic age. Dante, in particular, towered in the imagination of the British Romantics. This article argues that there is a core set of ideological values which unites British Romantic intellectuals of diverse backgrounds in their reception of Dante. Ideology is regarded here as a multifaceted domain comprised of two realities- religion and politics which 'were virtually inseparable' in nineteenth-century Britain, a period 'when Christianity was considered to be part of the law of the land.'