Ricerc@Sapienza

In this article I trace the changes in the literary and material representations of the indigenous peoples of North America within the British sphere of cultural production. As a first example I will give an account of the episode of the “Four Iroquois Kings” envoy at Queen Ann’s court in 1710, focusing on the resonance of such a historical encounter in popular texts and iconographic material. As a second example, I analyse the popular story of Inkle and Yarico included in Richard Steele’s the Spectator in 1711, showing its impact on the early Enlightenment reflections on colonial trade.

The contributors deal with several ‘facets’ of the Italian seventies. Simona Colarizi provides an overview of the decade, analysing in particular the categories of movements, reforms, democracy, and transition. The article by Eugenio Capozzi focuses on the growing sentiment of hostility towards professional politicians, taking into account its origins and causes.

A large part of the existing historical research on the seventies in Italy takes the category of crisis to define the country’s situation in that decade. During the seventies Italy experienced a multifaceted systemic crisis: institutional, economic, political, cultural, social, and religious. This interpretation is convincing, however, only if the term-concept ‘crisis’ is not solely adopted in its negative connotations and the seventies are not exclusively understood as an age of darkness (and violence).