Manzoni's romanticism

Manzoni’s letter On Romanticism points to a moderate form of romanticism, nurtured by Enlightenment thinking and committed to the social, economic and moral progress of the new reading public. Manzoni’s perspective as a convert and believer was patterned onto this rationalistic and reformist core, which led to an original notion of Christian romanticism. In his literary works he developed certain features of European romanticism and rejected others. He ruled out classical mythology (or parodies it), in keeping with the objectives of the Italian romantic polemic, but unlike a number of German or English-language authors, did not draw on North European mythologies or the bizarre and exotic or extremes of fantasy. Running throughout Manzoni’s novel are his irony and humour, which are also aspects of European romanticism. His historical investigations were also a component of his romanticism. Love of history led to the appearance of historiographic texts and memoirs in early nineteenth century Italy and the rest of Europe, and lay at the root of the original blend between historical research and development of the modern novel known as the “historical novel”. Particularly in his historiographic writings, his tragedies and his novel, Manzoni’s interest lay in the history of the masses ignored by traditional historiography, a part of society leaving no documentary trace in spite of playing a determining role in historical transformations (the volgo disperso of the Adelchi, and the genti meccaniche e di piccol affare of the Promessi Sposi). The romantic theme of “titanism” favoured by a number of European writers, is absent from Manzoni’s tragedies (Adelchi is an elegiac and Christian hero, not a Titan), but discernible in his novel, where the Innominato (the Un-Named One), although he resolves the man-God conflict after his conversion, preserves certain strong traits of the romantic rebel.