
We have chosen to translate into English our review of Antonino De Francesco’s La palla al piede. Una storia del pregiudizio antimeridionale (Feltrinelli, Milan 2012), originally published in italian in "Quaderni eretici | Cahiers hérétiques", 3 (2015). The review is now more than ten years old, and the book itself, published thirteen years ago, has already been largely forgotten, a fact that is in itself significant when considering this type of historiographical production, which often bursts onto the scene with great fanfare only to fade rapidly from scholarly memory. This English version includes minor modifications and adaptations, as well as a brief final reflection on the book’s impact more than a decade after its release.
This translation therefore serves a double purpose. On the one hand, the theme itself—anti-Southern prejudice, its reiteration across centuries, its ideological and political uses—remains of undoubted relevance for understanding Italian history and identity. On the other hand, it offers an occasion to reflect more broadly on certain historiographical tendencies that reach far beyond the Italian case.
De Francesco’s work, while meritorious in its erudition and narrative construction, epitomizes a style of scholarship inclined toward intellectualized and often self-indulgent frameworks, not always firmly anchored in archival sources. Its reliance on literary and cultural representations, newspapers, theatre, and cinema, with limited attention to institutional documentation, mirrors a broader trend in contemporary historiography: the preference for striking titles, conceptual generalizations, and promotional impact, sometimes at the expense of empirical depth and long-term durability. It is precisely this aspect, the initial prominence followed by a rapid descent into semi-oblivion, that makes the book, and our review of it, worthy of revisiting.
De Francesco himself, former Professor of Modern History at the University of Milan and a scholar with an established career, has contributed significantly to debates on the Risorgimento and national identity. Yet his trajectory, emblematic of certain “intellectualist” currents in Italian historiography, offers a useful case for international readers, who may wish to assess both the strengths and the limits of this approach. By making this review accessible in English, we hope to broaden the conversation and invite a more critical engagement with the ways historians build narratives of prejudice, identity, and national divisions, and to reflect on why some works, despite initial acclaim, so quickly fade from the collective scholarly horizon.
Anti-Southern Prejudice from the 18th Century to the Present
Review of Antonino De Francesco, La palla al piede. Una storia del pregiudizio antimeridionale, Feltrinelli, Milan 2012, 254 pp.
De Francesco’s
La palla al piede pairs a flashy, promotional title (a very fashionable move these days, even among professional historians) with a rather traditional approach and a rigorous, detailed (if not exhaustive) analysis, which is certainly meritorious in contemporary times. The author mostly avoids gross oversimplifications, though some banalities do recur, and offers the reader a complex, shifting historical panorama from the late 1700s to today. The phenomenon under scrutiny, the anti-Southern prejudice and the depiction of Southerners as unreliable, undisciplined, violent, passionate and impulsive, faithless and corrupt, reappears persistently with similar traits over centuries.
The theme is not new, and the sources are limited: primarily the most influential newspapers, literature, theater, and cinema. Still, the structure is well built and the nine chapters integrate with one another. The various (though not many) phases of anti-Southern prejudice from the late 18th century to today are well contextualized in political events that serve as background. De Francesco moves between cultural history and political history, avoiding the paths of anthropology, sociology, or historical psychology. A more extensive comparative treatment with other historical or geographical contexts would certainly have made the work more interesting and stimulating.