Bringing together the work of a ground-breaking group of scholars working on the Italian Risorgimento to consider how modern Italian national identity was first conceived and constructed politically, the book makes a timely contribution to current discussions about the role of patriotism and the nature of nationalism in present-day Italy.

Illustrations Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction: Revisiting the Risorgimento; S.Patriarca & L.Riall European Romanticism and the Italian Risorgimento; P.Ginsborg The Hero and the People; A.Lyttelton From the People to the Masses: Political Developments in Italian Opera from Rossini to Mascagni; S.Chiappini Discovering Politics: Action and Recollection in the First Mazzzian Generation; A.Arisi Rota  & R.Balzani Mazzini and/in Love; R.Pesman Personal and Political Passions: Mothers in the Risorgimento; M.D'Amelia A Patriotic Emotion: Shame and the Risorgimento; S.Patriarca   Men at War: Masculinity and Military Ideals in the Risorgimento; L.Riall The Remembrance of Heroes; A.M.Banti   Anti-Catholicism and the Culture War in Risorgimento Italy; M.Borutta Italian Jews and the 1848-49 Revolutions: Patriotism and Multiple Identities; T.Catalan Liberalism and Empires in the Mediterranean: the Viewpoint of the Risorgimento; M.Isabella The Risorgimento: a Multi-National Movement; D.Reill Bibliography