The ‘united voice of Italy’: The Liberal and Mary Shelley’s ‘A Tale of the Passions’

The essay examines one of Mary Shelley’s contributions to The Liberal, an ambitious but short-lived periodical conceived between Italy and Britain by well-known radical writers of the Romantic period, including Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, and Leigh Hunt. The periodical has been criticised both during its short lifespan (1822-23) and even by later scholarship, especially because of its alleged lack of coordination, coherence and even common sense. Despite these critiques, “A Tale of the Passions”, which appeared in the second issue of The Liberal (1 January 1823), proves Shelley’s clear cohesive ambition, as she situated her short story within the overall thematic, ideological, cosmopolitan, and even intertextual scope of the periodical. The short story is set in the warfare atmosphere of medieval Florence, in the midst of the internal conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines, and reflects Shelley’s strong and long-lasting interest in Italian culture and history. Shelley’s engagement with Italian history, topography and language is functional to situate the main action in a distant space of alterity, while allowing her to draw a parallel with the contemporary situation in Italy, and to provide a wider commentary on the political debates taking place in her homeland. The analysis considers the complex intertextual and interdiscursive networks that Shelley masterfully deploys in the narrative, allowing the text to dialogue with other contributors and contributions in The Liberal, but also to actively engage with external texts and contexts.