The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers : an Annotated AnthologyManfred Pfister Rodopi, 1996 - 554 pages This is the first anthology of British travel writing on Italy which traces the development of the genre and the history of the British perception of Italy from the Renaissance to the present. As an anthologie raissonnéeit presents the texts in thematic clusters and chronological order, providing commentary and annotations for each of them and their nearly hundred authors (some of them, like Smollett, Byron, Dickens or Huxley, well-known, others virtually unknown, amongst them many unduly neglected women writers). Further features are a substantial introduction to the travelogue and the writing of Italy, more than thirty illustrations visualizing the British experience of Italy, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 15 | |
| 58 | |
The Hazards of Travelling | 118 |
The Perception of Otherness | 142 |
Womens Studies | 194 |
and the Genius of the Roman Catholic Religion | 205 |
Modena and Parma | 228 |
as Cavaliere Servente | 269 |
Domestic Economy | 291 |
Momentary Passions | 293 |
Good Manners | 299 |
Italian Cities | 337 |
Lady Hamiltons Attitudes | 383 |
Off the Beaten Tracks and the Mezzogiorno | 395 |
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Common terms and phrases
Addison Alps ancient Anna Brownell Jameson anthology antiquities Apennines beauty British travellers Byron called Catholic century church classical colour culture D.H. Lawrence Diary Edward Lear England English Etruscan eyes Florence Frances Trollope French Fynes Moryson George Giro d'Italia gondola Grand Tour Grand Tourists hand Hazlitt Hester Lynch Piozzi hills imagination inhabitants interest Italian John Joseph Joseph Addison journey kind Lady land Letters from Italy live London look manner miles modern mountains Naples nature never night once painted palace passed picture picturesque poet political Pope present Richard Lassels road Roman Rome round Ruskin Samuel scene seemed seen Shelley Sicily stone streets TEXT things Thomas Thomas Coryate thought Tobias Smollett told tomb town travelogues Tuscany Venetian Venice villa walls William William Hazlitt woman women writing young
Popular passages
Page 357 - I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; A palace and a prison on each hand : I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles...
Page 81 - This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Page 357 - In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone - but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
Page 106 - And says there's news to-day — the king Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling : — She hopes they have not caught the felons. Italy, my Italy ! Queen Mary's saying serves for me — (When fortune's malice Lost her — Calais) — Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it,
Page 85 - If some yet do not well understand what is an Englishman Italianated, I will plainly tell him. He that by living, and travelling in Italy, bringeth home into England out of Italy the religion, the learning, the policy, the experience, the manners of Italy. That is to say, for religion, Papistry or worse. For learning, less commonly than they carried out with them ; for policy, a factious heart, a discoursing head, a mind to meddle in all men's matters ; for experience, plenty of new mischiefs never...
Page 14 - A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean.
Page 239 - With all the gifts that heav'n and earth impart^ The smiles of nature and the charms of art, While proud oppression in her valleys reigns, And tyranny usurps her happy plains...
Page 85 - I should think that your best line will be through the whole length of France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa; whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge.
Page 90 - After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye ; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation.
Page 138 - Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight.