Author: Prof. Peter Vassallo
The essays offered in this book explore some of the significant Romantic and post-Romantic constructions of Italy, its culture and history, beginning with Madame de Stael’s seminal Corinne, ou l’Italie (1807), which would prove influential in the aesthetic imagery shaping and surrounding subsequent literary works about Italy. The Italian landscape and cultural scene invited both description and re-inscription by some of the prominent British writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who were responding to the fascination exerted upon them by Italian culture generally. The chapters in this book consider the rich texture of this scene of literary and cultural influence, focusing on the perception, representation and appropriation of Italy by some major British writers of the period indicated, among them Lord Byron, Lady Morgan, Percy Shelley, John Keats, George Eliot, John Ruskin, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats.
