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Examining a variety of newspapers, novels, and Inquisition trials, Lang demonstrates how the accounts of conversion to the Catholic Church provide an unusual political opinion with serious ramifications in the shaping of national Italian identity during unification.

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Introduction PART I: TRIALS Reading Between the Lines: Inquisition Texts and Catholic Conquests Re-writing the Jew in Restoration Italy: The Stories of Salvatore Tivoli and Samuelle Cavalieri PART II: NOVELS Proselytization as Nationalist Project: Alessandro Manzoni the Convert(er) Conversion and National Identity: A Reading of Bresciani´s L´Ebreo di Verona PART III: THE CATHOLIC PRESS Private Letters, Public Stories: From the De Joux Conversion(s) to the Mortara Affair

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ARIELLA LANG is Lecturer in Italian and Comparative Literature, Barnard College, USA.

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