Il Carnevale come soglia del moderno. Permanenze franco-tedesche nella descrizione della festa romana in Corinne ou l’Italie di Germaine de Staël

Abstract

The contribution intends to examine some passages of the description of the Roman Carnival present in the novel by Germaine de Staël, Corinne ou l’Italie (1807). After analyzing the writer’s cultural background (German idealism, Frühromantik, Enlightenment universalism), I will focus not only on the meaning that the episode takes on within her aesthetics, but above all I will try to identify the peculiar traits of the new modern mentality arising from developments of the French Revolution. In this way, it will be possible to place the novel in a broader cultural and historical perspective and, at the same time, reflect on the meaning taken on by the Carnival rite on the threshold of the modern era.