Procession as a Literary Motif: The Intersection of Religious and National Symbolism in Italian Narrative (Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries)

National imagery developed as a secular substitute for religion, and in modern society, there has been a ‘transfer’ of sacredness from religion to politics. This paper focuses on Italy, where, despite the legal separation of church and state, the ‘sacral’ national apparatus still owes a considerable...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ponzo, Jenny 1985- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Journal of religion in Europe
Year: 2017, Volume: 10, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 107-146
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Italy / National consciousness / Church / Procession / Civil religion / Political identity
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AG Religious life; material religion
KBJ Italy
ZC Politics in general
Further subjects:B Civil Religion procession literature disorder / order nation symbols Italy Catholicism
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Summary:National imagery developed as a secular substitute for religion, and in modern society, there has been a ‘transfer’ of sacredness from religion to politics. This paper focuses on Italy, where, despite the legal separation of church and state, the ‘sacral’ national apparatus still owes a considerable debt to religion. After a short exposition of some of the main theories of civil religion in Italy, this work will analyze a corpus of Italian novels set during the Risorgimento, a period that functions in Italian culture as an atypical founding myth. It will show in particular how civil and religious symbols and rituals intersect in the literary representation of processions. Indeed, the procession is a recurring motif in Italian narrative and presents peculiar aesthetic features. The analysis of this literary motif will take advantage of socio-anthropological theories and will trace a distinction between ordered and disordered, or enthusiastic, processions.
ISSN:1874-8929
Contains:In: Journal of religion in Europe
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18748929-01002005