Alle origini della letteratura italoamericana: Joseph Rocchietti

This essay examines the life and work of Joseph (born Giuseppe) Rocchietti (1798/99-1879), the earliest known Italian American novelist and playwright, who moved to the United States in 1830, probably for political reasons. The first part of the essay reviews the research done so far on Rocchietti, from Carol Bonomo Albright’s discovery of his 1835 epistolary novel Lorenzo and Oonalaska to Raymond Niro’s invaluable biographical findings. To the latter, the essay adds an important chapter, in the form of a letter to Ugo Foscolo written by Rocchietti when he was living in Switzerland and planning to emigrate to the United States. This letter is both an outpouring of admiration for the great poet and an expression of Rocchietti’s balancing act between his own literary aspirations and the harsh reality of his condition as an impoverished expatriate. The rest of the essay focuses on the novel Lorenzo and Oonalaska and the pamphlet Why a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of North America which Rocchietti published in 1845. In particular, the essay calls attention to the surprising lack of descriptions of American manners and the American landscape in the section of the novel set in the United States, possibly a reflection of Rocchietti’s own sense of alienation and displacement. The one significant exception is a reference to a recognizable location in New York’s financial district, the center of what Rocchietti regarded as possibly the most worrying American malady: the national obsession with gain and profit. The analysis of the pamphlet (which was panned by none other than Edgar Allan Poe) also concentrates on Rocchietti’s firm belief that the United States should strive to reconnect with its European roots (especially with the heritage of the classical world) rather than try to achieve cultural independence. Writing at the height of Nativism, Rocchietti emphasizes the valuable contribution of immigrants to American life both in cultural and economic terms.