Introduction: Italy and the emotions

Characterised as the country of gestural expressiveness and animated verbal exchanges, of Latin lovers and of operatic excess, Italy has long been seen as a domain of emotional intensity. However, this association between Italy and the emotions has tended to remain a matter for popular imagination and stereotypical representations, and it is only recently that the question of emotions has started to become a focus for scholarly investigation. This special issue has its origins in the Association for the Study of Modern Italy's 2009 annual conference, Italy and the Emotions: Perspectives from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, organised by the editors. The conference offered the first opportunity to bring together scholars of Italy working in a wide range of disciplines in order to hear from the pioneers of such research and to exchange ideas on the new insights and new lines of research being opened up by a focus on emotions. There is considerable interest in this emerging field of study in Italy, as the response to the conference demonstrated, but other than the widely known work of scholars such as Alberto Mario Banti, Luisa Passerini and Alessandro Portelli (discussed briefly below), little else has been published so far. With this issue we hope both to showcase some of the work that is being done, and to provide an impetus for further research.