Republican Memory and Female Revolutionary Icons: the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 in Literary and Cinematic Media of Cultural Memory (20th and 21stcenturies)

• Applicant: Dr. Tobias Berneiser
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505266969

1) Differentiation of specific cultures of memory related to the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 2) Investigation of the nexus of cultural memory formation and identity creation as well as the role of media within this process.3) Elaboration of the significance of gender relations for the cultural memory process on the basis of their respective representation in commemorative media4) Analysis of media iconisation processes in the context of the cultural memory of the Neapolitan Republic. The project applied for deals with the Neapolitan Revolution and the subsequent Republic of 1799, an event in European history whose representations in literary and cinematic media of the 20th and 21st centuries are to be examined from a cultural studies perspective. Fundamental to the scientific concept of the project are both the conception of memory as a dynamic process and the supplementation of cultural memory studies with approaches from media studies. In addition to the examination of different cultures of memory and their respective motivations for remembering the Neapolitan Republic, the connection between cultural memory formation and identity creation as well as the role of media within this process will be analyzed. The media of cultural memory examined in this context consist of commemorative writings, biographies of Neapolitan republicans, novels, plays, essays, films and comics from the 20th and early 21st centuries that refer to the events of 1799. Special consideration will be given to the media representations of Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, who is today considered the best-known representative of the Republic of 1799: by examining the transformation of a republican originally praised as a patriotic martyr into a feminist identification figure in the 1980s and, eventually, her development into a cultural icon for the revolutionary memory of the 21st century, the projet aims at making an innovative contribution to research at the interface of memory and gender studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants