Anne O’Connor

An Italian Inferno in Ireland: Alessandro Gavazzi and Religious Debate in the Nineteenth Century

Alessandro Gavazzi (1809–89), the ‘warrior-priest’,1 is a well-known figure in the history of the Risorgimento, famed for his patriotic oratory, his tireless support of the Italian nationalist cause, and — after Pope Pius IX’s repudiation of Italian nationalism in 1848 — his virulent anti-Catholicism. Following the collapse of the 1848–9 revolutions in Italy, the former Barnabite monk spent much of his life abroad, preaching on Italian and anti-papal themes, first and principally in the United Kingdom, but also in North America. Gavazzi’s lecture tours in England, Scotland, the United States and Canada have all been subject to scholarly scrutiny, particularly in relation to the ‘Gavazzi riots’ in Quebec and Montreal in 1853.2 In contrast, nothing has been written on Gavazzi’s Irish tours, despite their frequency — Gavazzi came to Ireland on at least 17 occasions; a single tour could contain upwards of a dozen lectures at venues across the country (see Appendix 1) — and his considerable impact on mid-century Irish sectarian relations and debates regarding the ‘Italian Question’. Biographers of Gavazzi mention these visits only in passing.3 Historians of nineteenth-century Ireland meanwhile rarely and only briefly mention the Italian, without fully comprehending the scope and range of his influence.4 This essay seeks to fill that lacuna.

Dante Alighieri — from Absence to Stony Presence: Building Memories in Nineteenth-Century Florence

Abstract The Dante narrative is one of the key narratives of nineteenth-century Italy in the self-fashioning of Italian patriotism. This article looks at the momentum behind the project to commemorate Dante in Florence in the early decades of the nineteenth century; it also considers the effect of the outsider gaze on remedying the absence of reminders of the poet in the city; and the beginnings of the utilization of Dante for political and national purposes. It addresses the memorial cult of Dante within a proto-nationalist framework, a cult which was led by Italians, but to which awareness of foreign commentary made an important contribution. The project of raising a monument to Dante in Florence in the pre-unification period provides a case study for the close examination of many entangled concerns. An examination of monuments in the formative stages of the Risorgimento reveals their extreme potency and ability to provide concrete examples of how collective myths and memories are mapped onto a landscape. Furthermore, the monument to Dante in Santa Croce shows how politics, ideology and literature combined to bring the project to fruition and to contribute to the evolving nineteenth-century Dante narrative.

‘Very Pretty, Signor’: Vernacular and Continental Currents and Clashes

This chapter uses a microhistory of a discussion in 1832 over the relative merits of translations from Italian compared with translations from the Irish language in order to illustrate how competition between translation traditions could be used to bolster and galvanise rival sides. The chapter examines the declared functions and utilities of translations from Irish as opposed to translations from European languages to question how the vernacular interacted with the continental in nineteenth-century discourse. It explores translation trends from Irish and from Italian in order to contextualise this collision point and to understand how translation activities interacted with literary prestige, competition, valorisation and mobilisation on a European stage.

European Languages in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

This chapter reveals a hidden history of knowledge of European languages in nineteenth-century Ireland. Studies of language in this period have focused exclusively on the relationship between the English and the Irish languages; this chapter provides a more complete picture of languages in Ireland and their functions in society. It pays particular attention to the place of European languages in the educational system and examines the links between travel, religion and translation in the diffusion of multilingual literacies. It also questions the impact of polyglot abilities on individuals and on Irish society.

Travel Literature and Traveling Irishness: An Italian Case Study

This chapter looks at the important societal, cultural, and historical issues relating to Irish travel to Europe in the nineteenth century. Using the case study of Julia Kavanagh’s travel book on Italy, A Summer and Winter in the Two Sicilies (1858), it identifies how travel to a European country could introduce dialogues about religion, gender, politics, and alterity. Although the field of travel out of Ireland to continental Europe has been relatively neglected, this chapter focuses on the potentialities of such research to understand how “Irishness” functioned in the world of intercultural interactions inherent in travel.

The Female Pen: Translation Activity and Reception

This chapter looks at female participation in transnational spaces and the many translations published by Irish women in the nineteenth century. By examining patterns of production and reception of translations by Irish female translators, this chapter considers the context within which these women worked. An analysis of how reviews assessed translations by women highlights the gendered norms of the period and the societal context of their transnational work. Various examples are used, from women translating for the national press to nuns translating devotional material. The research reveals active and engaged networks of female translators working in a positive environment which offered new opportunities for literary, political and societal outlets through translation.

The Translation Trade: Economies of Culture in the Nineteenth Century

This chapter examines the trade of translations in nineteenth-century Ireland and, in particular, the influential agency and patronage of publishers in driving the circulation of translations. Using the case study of the Dublin publisher, James Duffy, the chapter looks at the importance of translations in his trade and how his publications both moulded and responded to emerging Irish reading trends. The expansion of the reading public, technological advances and changes in copyright laws all contributed to unfolding possibilities in the world of letters in Ireland. This chapter examines the commercial success of certain types of translation and the dramatic rise of James Duffy on the back of a strong translation trade.

Death of the Author, Birth of the Translator? Translation and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

This chapter examines the relationship between translation and originality by focusing on the literary activities of Francis Mahony and James Clarence Mangan and their experiments with translation and creativity. The chapter explores the creative tensions in translation as both an original and a derivative text and looks at how the Irishmen’s work challenged the notions of originality and authorship in the nineteenth century. It questions the overlaps between translation and imitation in debates on authorship in the Romantic era, and it looks at how, in the work of these two translators, translation could function in the liminal space between inspiration and imitation.

Translation and the Nation

This chapter examines the intersection of nation and translation by studying the translation activities of Young Irelanders. It looks at how European links challenge notions of national distinctness while at the same time assisting in a programme of political and cultural separatism. By examining how Irish cultural mediators imported ideas, forms and motifs from Europe through translation, this chapter considers the international nature of nationalism in this period. The appropriation and diffusion of European tropes and forms through translation is a striking example of transnational flows, even in the most national of arenas.

Translation and Religion

Contextualised within the religious realities of nineteenth-century, the chapter considers how religious translations dominated translation output in Ireland and how they were used to bolster religious devotion. It looks at a variety of religious publications from sacred texts to auxiliary texts for liturgical, educational and devotional purposes. The chapter highlights the participation of members of religious orders in translation and examines how translation supplied literature for private piety and communal devotion and influenced the Europeanisation of Irish Catholicism.