Chloe Chard assembles fascinating passages from late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century accounts of travel in Italy, by Northern Europeans, writing in English (or, in some cases, translated into English at the time); it includes writings by Charles Dupaty, Maria Graham, Anna Jameson, Sydney Morgan, Henry Matthews and Hester Lynch Piozzi.
The extracts often focus on the labile moods that contribute to the 'triste plaisir' of travelling (as Madame de Stael termed it): moods such as restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion, animal exuberance, sexual excitement and piqued curiosity.
The introduction considers some of these responses in relation to the preoccupations and rhetorical strategies of travel writing during the Romantic period and introductory commentaries examine the ways in which the passages take up a series of themes, around which the five chapters are ordered: 'Pleasure', 'Rising and sinking in sublime places', 'Danger and destabilization', 'Art, unease and life', and 'Gastronomy, Gusto and the Geography of the Haunted'. -- .
Rezensionen / Stimmen
To call a book about the Grand Tour 'Tristes Plaisirs' shows originality. Usually, the dissipaions of the Society of Dilettanti and other milordi are characterised as a rollicking, aristocratic equivalent of a gap year, but the travellers' accounts anthologised in this book show that pleasure seeking could also be a serious affair.'
Not only is this book as well researched as one would expect from its scholarly authors, but it is also lavishly illustrated to illuminate the points they make: a dozen colour plates and more than 100 black-and-white photographs make the reader feel they have been on a grand tour themselves. -- .
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
mit Schutzumschlag
Illustrationen
Illustrations, black & white
Maße
Höhe: 236 mm
Breite: 150 mm
Dicke: 28 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-7190-4498-4 (9780719044984)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Chloe Chard is a writer who lives and works in London. She has spent time as a Fellow or Scholar at numerous research institutes and universities in Europe, America and Australasia. -- .
Preface
Introduction
I: Triste plaisir
II: The tropes of travel: how to avoid languor in language
1. Pleasure
I: The foreign and the familiar
II: Tourism: the management of pleasure
2. Rising and sinking in sublime places
3. Danger and destabilization
I: Indolent delicious reverie
II: Disease, debilitation and delusions of revival
III: Banditti
4. Art, unease and life
I: Odd spectators
II: Sculpture studios; socializing with works of art
5. Gastronomy, gusto and the geography of the haunted
Bibliography -- .
