“Dante e l’Italia sono la stessa cosa”: Poet and Nation in the Centenary Years of 1865 and 2021

This essay discusses how Dante centenaries over the last two centuries have often served to contain the medieval poet within a restrictive national framework, one which can impoverish our understanding of his cultural, linguistic, and political reality. It begins by focusing on the celebration of the 1865 centenary in Florence, its importance in consecrating Dante as a symbol and vessel of the Italian nation, and the commemorative rhetoric associated with this event. It then considers some echoes of this rhetoric in contemporary Italian politics, looking especially at the terms in which the nationalist-populist movement of Giorgia Meloni, Fratelli d’Italia, claimed Dante as “father of Italian identity” during the centenary year of 2021. Finally, it reflects upon some of the problems associated with viewing Dante through a rigid national frame, and upon the persistence of this image of the poet.