Impressions of Southern Italy

Impressions of Southern Italy
Author: Sharon Ouditt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134705069

Naples was conventionally the southernmost stop of the Grand Tour beyond which, it was assumed, lay violent disorder: earthquakes, malaria, bandits, inhospitable inns, few roads and appalling food. On the other hand, Southern Italy lay at the heart of Magna Graecia, whose legends were hard-wired into the cultural imaginations of the educated. This book studies the British travellers who visited Italy's Southern territories. Spanning the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the author considers what these travellers discovered, not in the form of a survey, but as a series of unfolding impressions disclosing multiple Southern Italies. Of the numerous travellers analysed within this volume, the central figures are Henry Swinburne, Craufurd Tait Ramage and Norman Douglas, whose Old Calabria (1915) remains in print. Their appeal is that they take the region seriously: Southern Italy wasn't simply a testing ground for their superior sensibilities, it was a vibrant curiosity, unknown but within reach. Was the South simply behind on the road to European integration; or was it beyond a fault line, representing a viable alternative to Northern neuroses? The travelogues analysed in this book address a wide variety of themes which continue to shape discussions about European identity today.

Literature of Travel and Exploration

Literature of Travel and Exploration
Author: Jennifer Speake
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1425
Release: 2014-05-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135456631

Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.

Literature of Travel and Exploration: G to P

Literature of Travel and Exploration: G to P
Author: Jennifer Speake
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2003
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9781579584245

Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.

The Evolution of the Grand Tour

The Evolution of the Grand Tour
Author: Edward Chaney
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2014-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317973674

The Grand Tour has become a subject of major interest to scholars and general readers interested in exploring the historic connections between nations and their intellectual and artistic production. Although traditionally associated with the eighteenth century, when wealthy Englishmen would complete their education on the continent, the Grand Tour is here investigated in a wider context, from the decline of the Roman Empire to recent times. Authors from Chaucer to Erasmus came to mock the custom but even the Reformation did not stop the urge to travel. From the mid-sixteenth century, northern Europeans justified travel to the south in terms of education. The English had previously travelled to Italy to study the classics; now they travelled to learn Italian and study medicine, diplomacy, dancing, riding, fencing, and, eventually, art and architecture. Famous men, and an increasing proportion of women, all contributed to establishing a convention which eventually came to dominate European culture. Documenting the lives and travels of these personalities, Professor Chaney's remarkable book provides a complete picture of one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of western civilisation.

Shelley's Eye

Shelley's Eye
Author: Benjamin Colbert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351900404

Percy Bysshe Shelley joined the deluge of sightseers that poured onto the Continent after Napoleon's defeat in 1814, and over the next eight years Shelley followed major travelling trends, visiting Switzerland in 1816 and Italy from 1818. Shelley's Eye is the first study to address Shelley's participation in the travel culture of Post-Napoleonic Europe, and the first to consider Shelley as an important travel writer in his own right. This book is informed by original research on a wide range of period travel writings, including Mary Shelley and Shelley's neglected collaboration, History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), in which 'Mont Blanc' first appeared. Fully responsive to the culture of travel, Shelley's travel prose and poetry form fascinating conversations with major Romantic travellers like Byron, Wollstonecraft, and Wordsworth, as well as lesser-known but widely read travel writers of the day, including Morris Birkbeck, Charlotte Eaton, and John Chetwode Eustace. In this provocative study, Benjamin Colbert demonstrates how the Grand Tour remains a vital cultural metaphor for Shelley and his contemporaries, under pressure from mass travel and popular culture. Shelley's travel prose and 'visionary' poetry explore motives of perception underlying travel discourse and posit an authentic 'aesthetic vision' that reconfigures social, historical, and political meanings of 'sights' from the perspective of an ideal tourist-observer. Shelley's Eye offers a new perspective on Shelley's intellectual history. It is also a timely and important contribution to recent interdisciplinary scholarship that aims to re-evaluate Romantic idealism in the context of physical, experiential, or material cultural practices.