Simplicity, clarity and effectiveness: exercising fluency in Eugenio Balbi’s Primi Elementi della Lingua Inglese (1840): from a European and political perspective.

In the first half of the 19th century, Italy was still to become a nation, yet a newly learned bourgeoisie emerged with a new lifestyle and values. In this context, both a revolutionary and a conservative approach to politics and the history of Italy coexisted and raised a discussion on the status of Italian as a common literary language. While Napoleonic France, the Papal States and the Austro-Hungarian reign were seen as a menace to the idea of an Italian Nation, England and the United States became the emblem of economic progress, cultural advancement and political equity. Reading a text in English rather than via a (censored) translation began to appeal to the new class, eager to access a modern worldview. For this reason, the bourgeois learner favoured a quick, practical method. Teachers marketed their grammar books as simple, effective, and clear and focused on gradual exercises as the best way to achieve fluency. The paper describes the introduction of this new practical methodology by examining Eugenio Balbi Primi Elementi della Lingua Inglese (1840) and discussing the meaning and implication of step-by-step learning of grammar against other methods and manuals of the age. In his manual, the exercise coincides with the understanding and parsing of the text rather than being the repetition of a given rule in diverse contexts. The paper shows how Balbi is unique and modern in letting the learner work out the ‘rules’ from short exemplary texts, favouring what would develop as a communicative approach.