"Una citazione a comparire". Concezione del mandato, memoria risorgimentale e identità politiche nei discorsi elettorali dell'Italia liberale (1860-1897)

• Published in: Quaderni storici 2004, Vol.117 (3), p.673-696
• Main Author: Finelli, Pietro
• Format: Article
• Language: Italian
• ISSN: 0301-6307

This article analyses the political language of the Italian Nineteenth Century liberalism starting from the electoral speeches of the most important political leaders collected in "La politica italiana dal 1848 al 1897", by Luigi Lucchini. In the first part, it focuses on the conceptions of the representation emerging from the electoral speeches of Nineteenth Century Italy, based on a very strong responsivity and having reference much more to the family and affection lexicon than to the one of law or economics. In the second part, the article examines two primordial issues cleaving the Italian liberals in opposite "interpretative communities": the memory of "Risorgimento" and the declinations and interpretations of the word "liberale". In conclusion, the study of the electoral speeches suggests the persistence of a cleavage between right and left wing of the liberal constellation, in fact deeper and longer than the one usually considered by a historiography focused only on politics.