REGARDS CROISÉS FRANCE-ITALIE

The rapport between Italy and France is historically replete with enthusiasm but also prejudice, the appeal of transalpine trends but also a refusal to accept their neighbor's customs and language. The relationship between the two countries over the centuries mirrors the hidden rivalry between them even though they share both a common religious and linguistic background and a humanistic cultural heritage. Despite this, their political, economic and social points of view divide them. The intense cultural and economic exchanges between these two countries (recounted by writers, travellers, diplomats, historians, translators, and migrants since the Middle-Age) took, and still take, the form of unconditional consensus at times while, at others, they become open hostility and claims of individual and/or national superiority. The relations between Italy and France cannot be reduced to the exchange of trends, movements and genres, or to political and diplomatic contacts. Rather, at each step, they imply a subtle yet deep and reciprocal, rethinking of our place in the world. Despite the frequency of contact between the two countries over the centuries, however, the relationship is still marked by a gulf, a gap to fill in, an irreducible divergence, which, at the same time, is the condition for the continuity and of the fecundity of the relationship between these two countries.