L’eredità dei Lumi in Italia: pubblicare Voltaire subito dopo l’Unità.

The article reconstructs the circumstances and polemical background of the publication of an unpublished Voltaire translation that took place in the same year as the Centennial of 1878: theItalian version in hendecasyllables of La Pucelle d’Orléans, translated by Vincenzo Monti. As in a true detective story, the hidden demiurge of the operation was unexpectedly the greatest living Italian poet, the then poet of democracy Giosuè Carducci. Not devoid of legal implications, the exhumation of the unpublished work concealed clear polemical aims of an anti-clerical nature, eventually sparking a battle of invectives across newspapers and magazines, both general and academic, involving writers and journalists, politicians and publishing magnates, as well as philologists and university professors—in a relentless war of criticisms, press attacks, and even speeches. This demonstrates how difficult it was in Italy—secular, monarchist, and post-unification, under a statutory regime—to publish translated satirical, blasphemous, and especially anti-clerical Voltaire. At the same time, it also shows how easy it was, during the height of the ‘Questione Romana’ and due to the Lumière-Revolution connection, to present the edition of precious literary unpublished works as a political and religious provocation.