L’Italia Felice

Abstract

In Chapter 1 the focus of our attention was Italy, the country, the nation. In this second chapter, however, we attempt to get a little closer to the Italians themselves. As well as a conversation, there are included a couple of reports on two light-hearted opinion polls. One investigated the views of Italians on religion; the other tried to discover the degree to which they considered themselves to be happy. Firstly, in part of a pull-out supplement published in La Stampa on 14 February 1986, Dada Rosso summarises for her readers the results of ‘research’ which attempted to gauge the state of happiness of the nation. Everybody questioned seemed to agree that Italy’s increased economic prosperity must have played some part in forming people’s opinions. The nation does appear to be remarkably contented. However reliable or suspect the outcomes of this particular piece of sociological inquiry, it is certainly the kind of happy news which seems tailor-made for what the journalist describes as ‘la rosea e ottimistica ricorrenza di San Valentino’.