Un’idea di Messico: sondaggi tra Sette e Ottocento

Abstract

The essay investigates some images of Mexico present in the Italian literature of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. America’s colonization is recalled by Parini and by other eighteenth century poets and intellectuals as a cruel exploitation of men and resources. In the operatic and narrative tradition the South American location gives rise to romantic plots as well as to a critical analysis of pre-Columbian religions (as in Casti’s and Poggi’s poems). But more common is the celebration of generous yet unhappy Aztec monarchs deposed by Spanish conquistadores, from Montezuma to Guatimozino. The latter is remembered by Carducci in the poem Miramar (1878) together with Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraine, the emperor of Mexico executed by Juárez’s Republican army.