The verdict was reached in the traditional Historic Trial staged each summer at Villa Torlonia at San Mauro Pascoli near Forlì in Romagna.
At the mock trial, which has previously featured figures and works including Garibaldi, Julius Caesar, Mazzini and cult Fellini film I Vitelloni, Cuore was defended by ex-Udine university literature lecturer Giampaolo Borghello.
“Cuore aims to be an edifying book, one of passionate exaltation of the Good, of willpower and altruism,” Borghello told the jury.
The landmark novel was acquitted by 443 votes to 126, with 146 abstentions.
Bologna university lecture Roberto Balzani meanwhile pursued a guilty verdict for the 1886 work on charges of simplistic moralism and over-sentimental nationalism in the wake of Italian reunification.
“I ask for the condemnation of De Amicis, not because he was incapable of writing a work on Italian unification for use in schools, but because he deliberately preferred to sweeten reality,” Balzani argued.
ANSA
