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NEW DATE! Classics, Love, Revolution: The Legacies of Luigi Settembrini

14 March 2023, 4:00 pm–7:00 pm

A view of the terrace of the old fortification Forte San Giorgio. A light, yellow-ish stone, the terrace takes up the majority of the picture, behind you can see a rocky coastline and little bit of the sea

Please note, this event is now taking place on 14 March. A discussion with Prof Andrea Capra and Barbara Graziosi exploring a new English-language translation of The Neoplatonists by Luigi Settembrini.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

Invitation Only

Availability

Sold out

Cost

Free

Organiser

Prof Phiroze Vasunia

Location

Council Room
G12 Ground Floor, South Wing, UCL
London
WC1E 6BT

Prof Andrea Capra (Durham University) and Barbara Graziosi (Princeton University) will  explore a new edition, introduction, and English-language translation of The Neoplatonists (I Neoplatonici) by Luigi Settembrini (1813-1876). The book revisits the legacies of Settembrini and puts them in dialogue with current debates about Classics, attempting to move beyond a hermeneutics of suspicion and towards an expansive classical tradition that sustains the regenerative possibilities of literature, love, and revolution. 

Respondents will be Daniel Orrells (King’s College London) and Beatrice Sica (UCL).

Luigi Settembrini  was a classicist and revolutionary condemned to death in 1849 for his role in the 1848 revolution in Naples. His wife managed to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment in the infamous Panopticon on the island of Santo Stefano, where inmates often killed each other and torture was common. There he managed to translate the complete works of Lucian, testing his language by reading out his work to his illiterate cellmates, who often knew no standard Italian – and reflecting on Lucian’s own attempts at creating a common language, humor, and popular philosophy. He wrote on women’s rights, celebrated gay love (in a fake ancient fiction he ironically entitled The Neoplatonists, while in fact rejecting Catholic, Neoplatonic humiliations of the body), and worked relentlessly towards an egalitarian and ethnically diverse future for the Italian nation. Together with Garibaldi he planned a daring escape from the Panopticon, which failed at the last minute; later he was forcibly sent into exile to the United States but, during the voyage there, two black sailors helped him and other Italian political prisoners to mutiny and disembark in Ireland. He returned to Italy in 1860, in the wake of unification. Back in Naples he oversaw the publication of the Herculaneum papyri; became Rector of the University; and was later elected Senator. He never completed his autobiography and, refusing to present himself as a hero, was soon forgotten.