Alla ricerca della «comune patria». L’itinerario di Carlo Troya
Carlo Troya (1784-1858) can be ascribed to that cultural current that can be defined as ‘liberal nationalism’, aimed at rediscovering the roots of a common nation beyond state institutions through a ‘high’ historical narration. All of his cultural and political reflection was essentially directed to the process of nationalization and the historical reconstruction of a national consciousness which he considered an alternative to the presence of the great empires and conditioned by an ancient ethnic conflict (a peculiar form of ‘conquest’) which had stopped the evolution. Although he may be considered the greatest Italian historian of the nineteenth century, his figure suffered a singular fate: central to the cultural debate of his time, he practically disappeared after his death; the historiographical production has been summarized as a work of erudition by a faithful follower of Manzoni, exclusively interested in the Lombard question; the militant political commitment in 1820-21 and in 1848-49 appeared spoiled by an eminently conservative approach with predominantly clerical traits. Overcoming these stereotypes that have prevented not even a historiographical work from being dedicated to the Neapolitan historian for over 120 years, is the main purpose of this research.
Ennio Corvaglia, researcher at the chair of Contemporary History of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bari, is the author of essays on nineteenth-century southern political thought and of the volume Tabacco e Corporativismo di Stato (Lecce 1983).
