Chapter 5 - London and Naples, 1819–1821

Summary

So far, this study has highlighted the growing interest radical and liberal writers showed in Italian literature in the aftermath of Waterloo. The work of exiled Italians in London and British writers in Italy played a significant role in intensifying the Regency’s fascination with Italy and Italian culture. These writers’ interest in Italian ideas flourished beside other interactions taking place in London, such as the promotion of Italian literature in the lectures of Hazlitt and Coleridge. In the first of his lectures on the English poets, Hazlitt claimed that Boccaccio, alongside Bunyan and Defoe, was the closest that prose had to the ‘essence and the power of poetry’, and that Dante was ‘the father of modern poetry’.¹ Coleridge gave thorough consideration to Ariosto, Tasso, and Boccaccio in the third of his 1818 lectures on European literature and devoted the tenth lecture of this series to Dante.