This monograph proposes an approach to Naples that releases the city from previous restrictive theorisations which, going back to the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, had constructed it as Other to the nation and northern Europe. In this view, Naples was the backward element of pre-Risorgimento Italy and the recalcitrant component of the new nation, incapable of moving with the North towards modernity. Building on recent scholarship that challenged this view to examine Naples on its own terms, Ruth Glynn focuses on the last 30 years of Neapolitan politics ‒ marked by the mayoralty of Antonio Bassolino (1993‒2001) and its promise of a moral and physical regeneration of the city, known as the ‘Neapolitan Renaissance’ ‒ and applies her methodology to a selection of media and cultural products that demonstrate the centrality of Naples to national concerns and the complementarity of the Neapolitan and Italian cultural traditions.
The book consists of six substantial chapters and two shorter introductory and concluding ones. Chapters 1–3 set the historical, geopolitical, cultural, and critical contexts, develop the theoretical approach, and unfold the book’s aims in relation to the choice of period, subject, and cultural products.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide an introduction and a critical analysis of a wide range of scholarship: Italian and Anglophone historical, political, and philosophical assessments, appraisals of the construction of Naples in the Italian and European imaginaries, and contemporary postcolonial critiques of meridionalismo, in particular by Franco Cassano, Pasquale Verdicchio, and Iain Chambers. Noting the limitations of their approaches for the study of cultural production, Glynn integrates Cultural, Urban, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies – disciplines upon which these earlier works were founded – into a framework of ‘accentedness’ drawn from Hamid Naficy and Carli Cotzee. This framework, enriched with additional theoretical notions specific to the cultural products under examination, is then used to consider Naples and its cultural practices as Neapolitan-accented expressions of Italian identity that speak to concerns shared nationally.
Chapter 3 analyses the role of two newspapers, Il Mattino and La Repubblica, in constructing Naples as a model of good governance for the new, post-Tangentopoli ‘Republic of the cities’ (Bassolino’s concept) through their coverage of the first direct mayoral election, Bassolino’s electoral campaign, and the success of his symbolic politics in regenerating the historical centre and hosting the 1994 G7 Summit.
Chapter 4 identifies the Neapolitan Renaissance as a form of utopianism. It examines Un posto al sole (1996‒), the first Italian soap opera, and two novels, Enrico Montesano’s Di questa vita menzognera (2003) and Ruggero Cappuccio’s Fuoco su Napoli (2010). The soap opera’s depiction of a progressive, modern, civic-minded, and predominantly middle-class community living in a palazzo in Posillipo as a microcosm of Italy replicates the nation-wide optimism surrounding the early years of Bassolino’s administration. Like Bassolino’s politics, Un posto al sole attempts to ‘normalise’ Naples, by purging it of its accentedness and the growing problems of the urban periphery. Published after Bassolino’s demise and at the height of Berlusconismo, the novels establish instead a negative alignment between Naples and Italy, providing dystopic representations of the criminal exploitation and commodification of Naples’ cultural heritage by local overlords with the support of the national government.
Chapter 5 applies a postcolonial economic lens to Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra (2006) to expose the thread running through it of the imbrication of the national institutions and industry into the Camorra and the implicit critique of Bassolino’s failure to tackle organised crime.
Chapter 6 reads the relationship between the protagonists of Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Novels’ (2011‒2014) as a heuristic for that between Naples and Italy. Using Ramona Fernandez’ concept of ‘somatope’, Glynn uncovers Ferrante’s efforts to complicate and overcome the traditional literary constructions of Naples as a feminised and corporeal entity (p. 230) and to free it from a northern gaze ‘invested in the progressive logic of modernity’ (p. 265), both of which denigrate and marginalise the city. She warns that the ending casts doubt on the ability of Ferrante’s Naples to provide an alternative model of national modernity.
Chapter 7 applies a heritage gaze to Dolce & Gabbana’s thirtieth anniversary fashion show ‒ inspired by Neapolitan popular culture and held in Naples in 2016 ‒ and two films, the Manetti Bros.’ musical comedy Ammore e malavita (2017), modelled on the sceneggiata, and Ferzan Özpetek’s Napoli velata (2017), which presents Naples as a cradle of esoteric practices and historical artistic assets for the tourist gaze. Both films showcase the rich Neapolitan cultural heritage departing from contemporary criminalised filmic depictions. Glynn proposes that Dolce & Gabbana and the films capitalised on the global success of Ferrante’s quadrilogy and Sky Atlantic’s Gomorra: La Serie (2014‒2021) and in turn contributed to introducing Neapolitan culture into the Made in Italy label. The then mayor Luigi de Magistris (2011‒2021) capitalised on the success of the fashion show and the films to rehabilitate Naples after the Camorra wars and the waste management crises of the previous decade, promoting it as a tourist destination in a rehashing of Bassolino’s politics.
Glynn delivers what she sets out to do. In detailing the fluctuating fortunes of Naples between beacon of good governance for the nation and embodiment of its ills, she provides evidence of the complex connections between Naples and Italy, dismantling Naples’ alterity. Here lies the book’s originality, making it a turning point in the scholarship on Naples. Glynn also puts forward her approach as a model for future cultural analyses of Naples and other cities in Italy and around the world within similar urban contexts.
We look forward to seeing Glynn’s methodology and results tested on other cultural products and especially the literature that has flourished in Naples since the 1980s, an area that Glynn could perhaps have explored in more detail. Fabrizia Ramondino’s works (1936‒2008) would have merited a reference, considering also that her 1981 novel Althénopis is credited with having relaunched Naples after the repression of the previous decades, leading to the emergence of many new writers. Bassolino’s appeal to Neapolitan authors to write the new Naples (Tuttolibri, 1994) and the ensuing debate would have been a useful starting point for Glynn’s literary analyses. Marosia Castaldi (1951‒2019) would also have been a valuable addition. Her novels, set between a southern city that often recalls Bassolino’s Naples, a northern city resembling Milan, and the world, reflect on the troubled Italian ethnic and racial diversity ‒ something that Glynn claims Neapolitan authors are reluctant to undertake (p. 322) ‒ and seem to disprove Glynn’s statement that the Neapolitan Renaissance is underrepresented in cultural production (p. 64). And, if, as Glynn also claims, ‘the relationship between city and nation features consistently but not always prominently or explicitly’ (p. 320), then Naples and the Nation's parallel critical enterprises are worth pursuing.
Naples and the Nation is a well-crafted and lucidly argued book (minor editorial imperfections could be removed in a second edition). It will provide a valuable theoretical, methodological, and critical paradigm for scholars of Naples and will be a fundamental textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Italian Studies, European Studies, and Global Studies.
