Аннотация:AbstractDuring the Romantic period, the experience of exile in England decisively influenced the flourishing of anthologies of Italian literature that could represent both a link with the homeland and a form of consolation for the difficulties of cultural and linguistic isolation. The first modern instance of a chrestomathy of Italian literature published in England dated back to Giuseppe Baretti’s Italian Library (1757), a selection based on such discriminating factors as the correctness of the Tuscan language, the preponderance of poetry, a limited selection of texts from the early ages, and reservations about seventeenth-century literature. These criteria inspired and directed most eighteenth-century and Romantic-period selections of Italian literature until, in 1828, Antonio Panizzi, professor of Italian at London University, published an anthology of Italian prose writers. After 70 years, the supremacy of verse decreed by Baretti was overthrown. And, against the emphatic pronouncements of other exiles, Panizzi’s choices reveal an unmistakably and concretely useful way of understanding tradition and presenting its landmarks to the readers of his adoptive country.
