Naples in the Eighteenth Century: The Birth and Death of a Nation State

by Edited by Girolamo Imbruglia

• ISBN13: 9780521631662
• ISBN10: 0521631661
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In 1734 the kingdom of Naples became an independent monarchy, but in 1799 a Jacobin revolution transformed it briefly into a republic. In these few but intense decades of independence all the great problems of the age of the Enlightenment became apparent: attacks on feudalism and on the power of the Catholic Church, the struggle for a modern economy, and aspirations to change the administrative machinery and the judicial system. Yet Naples was also the city visited by Winckelmann and Goethe, the city of Sir William Hamilton, of the study of Pompeii and Herculanum, and of the greatest musicians of the age. This collection of original essays addresses a range of issues in the city's political and cultural history, and demonstrates the city's importance in shaping the modern, enlightened culture of Europe.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations	ix
Introduction	1	(3)
Girolamo Imbruglia
The capital and the provinces	4	(18)
Maria Grazia Maiorini
The Court: power relations and form of social life	22	(22)
Giovanni Montroni
The arrogance of the market: the economy of the Kingdom between the Mediterranean and Europe	44	(26)
Biagio Salvemini
Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Naples	70	(25)
Girolamo Imbruglia
The feudal question, judicial systems and the Enlightenment	95	(23)
Anna Maria Rao
Intellectuals and academies	118	(17)
Elvira Chiosi
Music and Enlightenment	135	(19)
Renato Di Benedetto
Antiquarian studies in Naples at the end of the eighteenth century. From comparative archaeology to comparative religion	154	(13)
Alain Schnapp
How not to finish a revolution	167	(16)
Antonino De Francesco
Bibiography	183	(17)
Index of names	200