Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introducing modern Italian culture
- 1 The notion of Italy
- 2 Social and political cultures in Italy from 1860 to the present day
- 3 Questions of language
- 4 Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy
- 5 Catholicism
- 6 Socialism, Communism and other ‘isms’
- 7 Other voices: contesting the status quo
- 8 Narratives of self and society
- 9 Searching for new languages: modern Italian poetry
- 10 Drama: realism, identity and reality on stage
- 11 Italian cinema
- 12 Art in modern Italy: from the Macchiaioli to the Transavanguardia
- 13 A modern identity for a new nation: design in Italy since 1860
- 14 Fashion: narration and nation
- 15 The media
- 16 Since Verdi: Italian serious music 1860-1995
- 17 Folk music and popular song from the nineteenth century to the 1990s
- 18 Epilogue: Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium?
- Index
- Series List
13 - A modern identity for a new nation: design in Italy since 1860
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introducing modern Italian culture
- 1 The notion of Italy
- 2 Social and political cultures in Italy from 1860 to the present day
- 3 Questions of language
- 4 Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy
- 5 Catholicism
- 6 Socialism, Communism and other ‘isms’
- 7 Other voices: contesting the status quo
- 8 Narratives of self and society
- 9 Searching for new languages: modern Italian poetry
- 10 Drama: realism, identity and reality on stage
- 11 Italian cinema
- 12 Art in modern Italy: from the Macchiaioli to the Transavanguardia
- 13 A modern identity for a new nation: design in Italy since 1860
- 14 Fashion: narration and nation
- 15 The media
- 16 Since Verdi: Italian serious music 1860-1995
- 17 Folk music and popular song from the nineteenth century to the 1990s
- 18 Epilogue: Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium?
- Index
- Series List
Summary
Introduction
In the second half of the nineteenth century the face of Italy was transformed in a number of different ways. The political effects of national unification, combined with the economic, social and cultural ramifications of industrialization, engendered a new country complete with a new programme of action designed to take it into the twentieth century. The idea of 'newness' permeated many aspects of Italian life, underpinning numerous efforts to define the character of the new nation. The concept of 'Italianness' was also given renewed impetus in this period. A key theme in its formation was the appeal to past strengths: for example, to moments of high cultural achievement when Italy had made a unique impact in the international arena. Nowhere was this Janus-faced orientation - a simultaneous relationship both with the past and with the future - more apparent than in the design of Italy's objects and environments in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth. For five hundred years, through their artistic achievement and their high cultural significance, Italian decorative arts had been preeminent.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture , pp. 265 - 282Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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