With chapters on theatre and opera, architecture and urban planning, the medieval revival and the rediscovery of the Etruscan and Roman past, The Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy analyzes Italians' changing relationship to their new nation state and the monarchy, the conflicts between the peninsula's ancient elites and the rising middle class, and the emergence of new belief systems and of scientific responses to the experience of modernity.

Axel Körner is a reader in Modern European History at University College London. His publications include Das Lied von einer anderen Welt. Kulturelle Praxis in französischen und deutschen Arbeitermilieu (1997) and 1848: A European Revolution? (2000; rev.ed. 2003).

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Introduction

Part One: Political and Social Conflict

1 Notabili: The Local Persistence of the Old Régime

2 The Theatre of Social Change: Opera Industry and the End of Social Privilege

3 Money and Culture

Part Two: Writing the Past.

4 The Middle Class and the Historicising of the Present

5 Medieval Revival

6 Etruscans, Romans and Italians

Part Three: The City, The Nation and European Culture

7 Urban Space and Civic Culture: Representing City and Nation

8 Margherita: Umbertian Italy and its Monarchy

9 "Viva Rossini - Morte a Wagner"? From Campanilismo to the Future

10 Conclusions and Epilogue: Modernity, the Political Power of Culture and the Collapse of Liberal Democracy

Bibliography

Index