Rebellion, Romanticism and Narrative Construction in Luigi Pastro's Prison Memoirs

Many patriots and activists linked to the Italian Risorgimento spent time in prison and, around these experiences, constructed identities based on a sense of martyrdom and repression. The memoirs of polit- ical prisoners have always been an important source for reconstructing the conditions of detention in that period, however, the timing and the reasons that led to their publication and the use of images and repre- sentations of political imprisonment are important in understanding the propaganda and political role of these texts. Through an analysis of Luigi Pastro’s Memories of Prison, which were put together in 1860, but only published in 1907 and rethought on the eve of the First World War, this chapter investigates how the identity of political prisoners was constructed in the context of romanticism and the political activism of the Risorg- imento, two themes that formed a particular focus of Paul Ginsborg’s works.