The Afterlife of an Author

The final chapter traces Goldoni’s presence in modern French culture (theatre repertoires, publications, and school curricula) to measure how far Goldoni achieved posthumous gloire in his adoptive country. It reveals how, despite his claims to have proved himself as a French author, his lasting gloire in France is as an Italian; the comic outsider created by the Mémoires. Finally, it suggests that this outsider status meant his quest for integration into the French canon was doomed from the start: that contemporary conceptions of glory and national identity, which focused on a useful contribution to the nation, did not allow space for individuals from outside the national literary space.