Italy in English Literature

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Italy in English Literature

• Corso per Scienze del Turismo
• Donatella Badin

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Why should tourism students know literature?

• Tourists come to Italy expecting to see the
  places they have read about in literary works
  (see flyer)
• Tourists enjoy reading books about the places
  they visit (See Quot. 1)
• Realize that some of the consecrated places which
  every tourist must see have often been canonized
  by literature.
• Tourists arrive with preconceived ideas about
  Italy which they have formed through books,
  plays, films, operas, pictures
• Tourist operators in a country such as Italy
  should be familiar with the literary sources of
  stereotypes and commonplaces about the country

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Quotation 1
I have found it a pleasant thing while
travelling to have in the carriage the works of
those who have passed through the same country.
Sometimes they inform, sometimes they excite
curiosity ... Visiting spots often described,
pursuing a route such as those pursued by other
travellers form for the most part the common
range of the tourist (Mary Shelley Rambles
through Italy).   .
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The topic of the course

• Which images of Italy are reflected in English
  literature?
• How were they formed?
• Direct knowledge of the country
• Literary and artistic influence
• What role did literature play in the
  dissemination of ideas about Italy?

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Italy is a topos of the British imaginary

• Italy is a mythical, ideal reality
• It remained a constant component of the English
  background even in the centuries of Italys
  political eclipse
• Literary Italy is a construction, a creation of
  the writers, rather than a reportage. Yet the
  perceptions of Italy are more vivid than the
  actual experience of being in the country
• The traveller/ reader sees Italy through the
  filter of this half created reality

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Preconceived ideas about Italy

• Memories
• Artistic and literary associations
• Myths
• Stereotypes

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The perception of Italy is often based on sets of
comparisons with England

• Latin
• Roman Catholic (popist)
• Effeminate
• Passion
• Sensuous pleasure
• Exuberance
• Anarchy
• Disorganization
• Antiquity
• Hot

• Germanic
• Protestant
• Masculine
• Reason
• Discipline
• Self-control
• Political order
• Efficiency
• Modernity
• Cold

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Why were these preconceptions formed?

• To define oneself by defining the Other (see
  quotation n. 2)
• To define ones sense of cultural identity
• For political and ideological reasons

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The study of the Other is part of a wide
movement which challenges hegemonic strategies
in all fields.

• Liberation movements have achieved the political
  end to hegemony. (theorist Frantz Fanon)
• Deconstruction has taken up this challenge
  intellectually (Liberation movement of the mind)
• The imagological study of Italy is a
  poststructuralist, deconstructionist approach.

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Quotation N. 2Italy is Englands other self

• The British have for centuries been
  susceptible to the charms of Italy, of the bel
  paese. Unlike France or Germany, Italy does not
  challenge the British at any of the pursuits they
  are best at parliamentary democracy, fighting
  wars and writing plays. Instead, it excels in
  spheres in which the Brits invest little pride
  cooking, painting, music and living life with a
  general sense of style. It is a complementary
  match of masculine and feminine characters. All
  too often, though, it is a mismatch of
  understanding."

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What are we going to study in this course?

• Some set texts which illustrate the most common
  ideas about Italy
• The theory of literary genres. See how different
  genres (a play, a romance, a novel, a travel
  book, a poem) contribute to the dissemination of
  ideas.
• History and the history of literature to
  understand how different contexts determine the
  text.
• The theme of Otherness and Imagology (i.e. the
  study of images), a branch of comparative
  literature

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Otherness and the study of the images of the Other

• The study of the Other has become recently a very
  popular branch of knowledge (in anthropology,
  psychology, comparative literature)
• It attempts to see how a hegemonic culture or
  gender group views different or subaltern ones as
  exotic or inferior or just plain alien.
• A groundbreaking study in the field was Edward
  Saids Orientalism

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Detecting examples of Otherness internal to a
society

• Others as linguistic groups
• Others as physically different
• Handicapped people
• Racially different people
• Others as gender groups
• Women
• Gay and lesbian
• Others as social groups
• Foreigners
• People of other religions
• People distinguished by census or class

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Detecting examples of Otherness external to a
society

• Other nations
• Other religions
• Especially natives in countries discovered by
  Europeans

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How have Others been dealt with?

• Persecution, deportation e.g. genocides, the
  Shoah, pogroms,
• Enslavement, colonization
• Emargination, e.g. ghettoes, apartheid, exclusion
  from education, jobs
• Victimization, e.g. witch hunts, public
  punishments

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Othering through language

• Polarities
• Stereotyping
• Name calling
• Ridiculing linguistic expression of Others
• Ignoring artistic expression of Others
• Imposing literary, artistic canons
• Exoticism

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Dealing with the Challenge of Otherness

• Decolonization, reterritorialization, economic
  aid, challenge to new colonialism
• Liberation movements have achieved the political
  end to hegemony. (theorist Frantz Fanon)
• Multiculturalism
• Political correctness,
• New Age, alternative medicine

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Dealing with Otherness in Literature

• The critical movement of Deconstruction has taken
  up this challenge intellectually (a Liberation
  movement of the mind)
• Breaking up of the canon,
• Postcolonial literature, ethnic studies,
• Cultural studies,
• Feminist studies
• Imagological studies