Travel literature

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Travel literature

• Travel books
• Popular reading from 16th cent. on
• Personal impressions, anecdotes, autobiographical
  details.
• Some information
• Guidebooks
• More anonymous

• Both contribute to the construction of the image
  of a country.
• Shape the collective imagination

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Travel to Italy

• Middle Ages
• Pilgrimage, university attendance
• 16th-17th centuries
• young aristocrats often travelled through Europe
  with a tutor
• Visited courts of princes, universities,
  libraries
• in search of polish, civilised manners, learning
  and pleasure
• 18th century, Grand Tour
• widespread social practice
• middle classes and women.
• 19th century
• Whole families
• From midcentury mass tourism, thanks to
  transportation and the birth of tourist offices
  (Thomas Cook)

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PELLEGRINI DEL MEDIOEVO
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Italy prime destination of 18th century Grand Tour

• 18th century devotion to classicism
• 18th century devotion to Art
• 18th century cult of Nature
• Italy a common homeground for Europe. The Grand
  Tour search for a common identity

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18th century devotion to classicism

• Study, imitation and translation of the classics
• Buildings imitating classical models are raised
  in England
• Desire of first hand knowledge of remains of
  classical architecture
• Importance of Rome as destination
• German aesthetics at the basis of the
  reinterpretation of Italy as a locus classicus
• Lessings Laocoon
• Winckelmanns thoughts on the imitations of
  the Greeks. His admiration for the Belvedere
  Apollo

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18th century devotion to Art

• Familiarity with great Renaissance Italian art
• From collections of former grand tourists
• From imitations
• Desire for firsthand knowledge
• Visit to art galleries
• Visit to artists studios
• Purchase and commissioning of original and
  imitation work
• Commissioning portraits of visitors with
  classical or Italian background
• Desire to fit the fragments stored in ones
  imagination into the whole picture

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18th century cult of Nature

• Admiration of Italian landscape new aspect of
  last third of the century .
• 16th and 17th centuries looked at nature from
  agricultural and scientific point of view.
• Aesthetic category of the picturesque
• Aesthetic category of the sublime
• Influence of Rousseau
• Influence of landscape painting
• Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorrain, Jacob Philipp
  Hackert etc.

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The sublime

• Aesthetic category of the sublime, first
  (supposedly) introduced by Longinus, Greek
  rhethorician, author of the treatise On the
  Sublime.
• Boileau
• Theorized in England by Edmund Burke in A
  Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
  Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1765)
• Beauty cannot be explained by reason (as
  Winckelmann and neo.classical aesthetics did)
• Aesthetic thrill caused by natural elements that
  inspire awe or fear and remind man of the
  mightiness of divine creation and threat of
  destruction
• High mountains, cliffs, volcanoes, waterfalls,
  caves
• Thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions
• Threatening remains of the past, reminding man of
  possibility of destruction e. g. ruined towers,
  castles, isolated monasteries

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Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the
ideas of pain and danger, or is conversant about
terrible objects, or operates in a manner
analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime
it is productive of the strongest emotion which
the mind is capable of feeling. (Burke)
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The picturesque

• First discussed by landscape gardener William
  Gilpin
• Nature seen as a pictorial arrangement of
  landscape and human elements, a framed landscape
• Scenes of daily life
• Made livelier by persons and animals
• Scenes containing ruins and examples of old
  architecture were considered particularly
  picturesque.
• What is beautiful in its natural state with a
  certain "roughness irregularity and variety
  but with no excesses

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Italy and the picturesque

• Italy is the imaginary homeland and textual model
  of picturesque theory
• Gilpin advocated picturesque travel, in search of
  amusement through the enjoyment of picturesque
  scenery

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Picturesque beauty. we pursue through the
scenery of nature. We seek it among all the
ingredients of landscape -- trees -- rocks --
broken-grounds -- woods -- rivers -- lakes --
plains -- vallies -- mountains -- and
distances.. Besides the inanimate face of
nature, it's living forms fall under the
picturesque eye, in the course of travel and are
often objects of great attention. In the
same manner animals are the objects of our
attention, whether we find them in the park, the
forest, or the field. But among all the
objects of art, the picturesque eye is perhaps
most inquisitive after the elegant relics of
ancient architecture the ruined tower, the
Gothic arch, the remains of castles, and abbeys.
These are the richest legacies of art. They are
consecrated by time and almost deserve the
veneration we pay to the works of nature itself.
(fromWilliam Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque
Beauty,. Essay II. On Picturesque Travel (1794).
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Europes museum and Europes mausoleum

• Contemporary Italy seen as incomplete, deficient
  or decadent in comparison to its glorious
  classical past
• Neglect of ruins neglect of common European
  legacy
• Misuse of archeological remains for new
  constructions
• No present history
• The past overshadows the present ruins,
  monuments and paintings overshadow real people

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Immoral Italy

• Italian sexuality and gender roles exert a
  disturbing fascination on English visitors
• sensuousness and liberty
• Italians seen as soft, effeminate
• creativity a result of effeminacy
• Cicisbeismo
• Italy a sexual hot spot where young English
  gentlemen lose their innocence
• Country peopled by go-betweens of both sexes,
  organizing a parallel initiation tour.
• Italy a threat for the visitor

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Italian indigence and crime

• A backward people
• Live in primitive conditions
• Lack of comfort and hygiene
• Dirty, neglected urban environment
• Poverty
• Disease
• Beggars
• Dishonesty, cheating
• Crime
• theft
• Pickpockets
• Banditti (often romanticized)

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Catholicism

• No longer an object of revulsion but rather of
  curiosity or ridicule
• Superstitions, miracles, relics made fun of
• Church ceremonies folkloristic and exotic shows
• Holy week in Rome

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LItalia senza glitaliani

• Double rhetoric
• Rapture over antiquity, art, nature and climate
• Indifference to social and political set-up
• Contempt for Italians
• No longer machiavellian devils but poor devils.
• Same descriptions as for third world countries
• Grand tour a peaceful colonization, a cultural
  appropriation

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Eighteenth century travelogues

• A written testimonial of ones adventures on the
  Grand Tour
• Structured personal narratives.
• Often in diary or letter form
• Close to autobiography

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Travelogues vs guidebooks

• Guidebooks came into being at the start of mass
  tourism
• Baedeker 1836
• John Murrays 1837
• Travelogues strongly coloured by the personality
  of the writer / Guidebooks impersonal
• Both give advice and information to the traveller
• Distinction between the two genres blurred

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A symbolic Colonization

• Colonization may also be a cultural discourse
  imposing the colonizers views onto places and
  people.
• Edward Said Orientalism
• English government involved in commercialization
  of antiquities.
• Excavations in Rome
• Excavations in Pompei (Lord Hamilton)
• Travellers brought back souvenirs pieces of
  ruins, artwork they commissioned paintings of
  themselves
• Turned Italy into a sort of theme park

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The end of the great season of the Tour

• The Napoleonic empire brought actual colonisation
• British excluded from travelling in Italy until
  1815
• The Romantic myth of Italy tinged by political
  connotations
• By mid nineteenth century mass transportation.
  Railwats.
• Thomas Cook
• Official guidebooks
• Murrays
• Baedeckers
• Victorian England sees the beginnings of mass
  tourism
• Climatic stays
• The season

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The Package Tour

• Combined transportation, lodgings, sightseeing,
  money exchange, etc.
• First organized by Thomas Cook (1841)
• Cook organized package tours to allow people to
  attend temperance meetings (of the Baptist
  church)
• Cook negotiated a special fare due to the large
  number of people.
• First Thomas Cook tours abroad 1855 for Paris
  Exhibition.
• First Italian tour took place in the summer of
  1864.

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Tivoli Temple of the Sibyl and the Campagna
1765-70
Wilson Paesaggio italiano Turners debt was
explicit many years before he made his own trip
to the Roman Campagna, he copied the Kimbell
painting, though omitting the large tree and
figures ( c. 1798, Tate, London).Paesaggio
italiano
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Distant View of Maecenas Villa, Tivoli about
1756-70
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Tivoli. 1817
Turner's 'Tivoli' is sometimes cited as an early
example of Turner treating light effects in his
characteristic manner. Turner's approach greatly
influenced French artists of his own
generation--and the young Impressionists to
follow.
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Tivoli and the Roman Campagna (after Wilson)
1798 ( Tate-London)
Turner copied the Kimbell painting, omitting the
large tree and figures.