1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154606203321

Autore

Hester Nathalie <1970-, >

Titolo

Literature and identity in Italian baroque travel writing / / Nathalie Hester

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : Routledge, , 2016

ISBN

1-351-92203-3

1-315-25043-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (236 pages) : illustrations, maps

Disciplina

850.9/355

Soggetti

Italian prose literature - History and criticism

Italian literature - 17th century - History and criticism

Travelers' writings, Italian - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing"--t.p. verso.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. What's Italian about Italian travel writing? -- 2. Performing baroque travel : Pietro Della Valle's Viaggi -- 3. Travel writing and travel as writing in Francesco Belli's Osservazioni nel viaggio -- 4. Out to the center in Francesco Negri's Viaggio settentrionale -- 5. Repossessing travel writing : the circumnavigating moderno.

Sommario/riassunto

This first full-length study in English on seventeenth-century Italian travel writing enriches our understanding of an unusually fertile period for Italian contributions to the genre. The intrinsic qualities of this literature can now be grasped in terms of the larger question of cultural identity in Italy. For Hester, the specifically literary characteristics of Italian travel writing"including its humanism or Petrarchism"highlight the classic eminence throughout Europe of a prestigious tradition inherent to Italy, one compensating then for the peninsula's lack of a national political identity. Appeals to the cultural authority of that tradition represent a means of addressing and overcoming anxieties about the Italian subject's diasporic status during the "Golden Age" of European global colonial expansion. Self-funded travelers Francesco Carletti, Pietro Della Valle, Francesco Belli, Francesco Negri, and Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri are the major authors studied who journeyed through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and America.