[LANGUAGES] Alessandro Manzoni and the Betrothed 💍

Alessandro Manzoni is a big deal in the world of Italian literature. I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) is one of the most important and most widely read works in the Italian language. It’s like how we all had to read Shakespeare at school, Italians all had to read I Promessi Sposi. It is considered as one of the finest examples of Italian Romanticism and one of the best Italian historical novels to have been written. Manzoni consulted archives and based the plot off a true event. This novel is also a great examination of the human mind, good and evil and the nature of humanity. In May 2015, Pope Francis asked betrothed couples to read this novel before they were married!

💡 Things to consider

• History vs Fiction: Manzoni claimed ‘truth was the goal of writing’. Throughout the novel, the characters experience the plague, famine and foreign occupation – all of which happened in real life. However, this is historical fiction – Manzoni invents characters and has to resolve the novel by inventing fictional occurrences. A historiographer would point out there are power dynamics within historical records and even the records might not be telling the true story. Is it possible to make ‘truth’ the main goal of fictional writing? At what point do you have to sacrifice historical accuracy to make the novel function as a story? When does the novel become ‘historical fiction’ and not just a recounting of history?

• Religion: Religion crops up in many instances in the novel. The female protagonist, Lucia, takes refuge in a convent and meets a friar, who murdered someone, and a nun who isn’t religious, based on the real-life Nun of Monza. Previous ‘evil’ characters upon meeting Lucia, or seeing the truth in religion, repent their sins and regret their past actions. These characters are all complex characters; however, Manzoni shows through all of them that the one true saving force is the faith in Christianity. All the characters who repent are ‘saved’ from horrible endings. Manzoni in his youth was anti-Christian, however as he got older, he became a devout Catholic – his characters reflect this reversion of faith and his view of the Christian truth. Knowing this, do you think this makes the novel more or less autobiographical?

• Linguistic Importance: In the early 19th century, there was still a debate on which Italian dialect should become the literary language of Italy after reunification. Manzoni’s wanted reunification and believed Italy needed a common, standardised language. The Florentine Tuscan dialect was the most popular literary language, because of Dante and the other poets from that region. Even though he wasn’t fluent in Florentine dialect, in 1842 Manzoni removed most of the words in the Lombard dialect and changed the name of the main character to make the novel more accessible. Many phrases from this book are still quoted in everyday Italian. Was he right to write in a language that he wasn’t fluent in for the sake of national unity?

🔎 Find out more

• Schlegel, Christianity, and History: Manzoni's Theory of the Novel

• The Meaning of Gertrude in "I Promessi Sposi"

• The Crowd and Manzoni’s Conception of Cultural Unification

[MATHS] Ramsey theory: a breakthrough 🧮

It is a frequently discussed topic among undergraduate mathematicians at lunch: "what is your favourite proof?" There are a few reasons why a proof might be someone's favourite. One reason might be because it can be explained to someone with even the most basic maths education. We call these proofs elementary, not because they're easy but because they don't require much prior knowledge.

I will introduce you to a problem in a field called Ramsey Theory (named after Frank Ramsey, a brilliant mathematician who tragically died at a young age of 26). Ramsey Theory, to oversimplify a century-old field, seeks to find out the size of a group of things that contains a smaller group which has a nice property. Here is one such result of Ramsey Theory, which has a truly brilliant, elementary proof:

💡 Things to consider

• Now let's generalize: How many people would we need such that it is necessarily true that there are two different cliques (i.e. a group of m people and n people all of whom agree on their particular greeting method)? We write this number R(m,n). For example, it can be further shown that R(3,3)=6. That is, in any group of 6, not only have 3 people all shook hands, but a group of three people have all high-fived.

• Paul Erdos: Now, in general, as m and n get bigger, the number of cases to check becomes too large. Paul Erdos, a brilliant Hungarian mathematician, supposedly once said something along the lines of: imagine an alien force, vastly more powerful than us, landing on Earth and demanding the value of R(5, 5) or they will destroy our planet. In that case, we should marshal all our computers and all our mathematicians and attempt to find the value. But suppose instead that they ask for R(6, 6). In that case, we should attempt to destroy the aliens. He's right too. We know that R(6, 6) is between 102 and 165, but to check the number 102, for example, we must clamber through 10¹⁵⁵⁰ possibilities!

• So what's the breakthrough?: Well, although we can't know R(n,n), even for small numbers, we do know some upper bounds. In particular, 4ⁿ has been known for a while. However, recently a breakthrough occurred. In 2023, Sahasrabudhe, Morris, Griffiths, and Campos found a new upper bound. What is it? 3.9921875ⁿ. Can you believe it? Nor can I! It has revolutionised the game! I wonder what these mathematician-types will uncover next!

🔎 Find out more

• YouTube: Ramsey Theory Introduction

🗳️ Poll

👀 Keep your eyes peeled for…

• 23rd-26th October: University of Oxford History Skills Workshops

• 24th October: University of York Open Lecture: Black Victorians

• 24th October: University of Bath Physics webinar

• 25th October: Introduction to Veterinary Nursing

• 25th October: University of Exeter Black Women in Health and Social Care Panel webinar

• 26th October: University of Bath Pharmacy webinar

• 26th October: Supporting your child's UCAS application for courses starting in 2024