Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century ItalyRobert K. Martin, Leland S. Person Featuring essays by twelve prominent American literature scholars, Roman Holidaysexplores the tradition of American travel to Italy and makes a significant contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century American encounters with Italian culture and, more specifically, with Rome. The increase in American travel to Italy during the nineteenth century was partly a product of improved conditions of travel. As suggested in the title, Italy served nineteenth-century writers and artists as a kind of laboratory site for encountering Others and “other” kinds of experience. No doubt Italy offered a place of holiday—a momentary escape from the familiar—but the journey to Rome, a place urging upon the visitor a new and more complex sense of history, also forced a reexamination of oneself and one's identity. Writers and artists found their religious, political, and sexual assumptions challenged. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun has a prominent place in this collection: as Henry James commented in his study of Hawthorne, the book was “part of the intellectual equipment of the Anglo-Saxon visitor to Rome.” The essayists also examine works by James, Fuller, Melville, Douglass, Howells, and other writers as well as such sculptors as Hiram Powers, William Wetmore Story, and Harriet Hosmer. Bringing contemporary concerns about gender, race, and class to bear upon nineteenth-century texts, Roman Holidays is an especially timely contribution to nineteenth-century American studies. |
Contents
RICHARD H MILLINGTON | 9 |
The Marble Faun and the Cultural Space of MiddleClass Leisure | 13 |
KRISTIE HAMILTON | 13 |
Copyright | |
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Adam Parkes Adina aesthetic antebellum anxieties argues artists beauty bust carnival century character civilization Cleopatra critical cultural Daisy Miller describes desire Don Ippilito Donatello Egypt erotic essay feminine Ferris fiction figure Foregone Conclusion Frederick Douglass Fuller gaze gender Harriet Hosmer HAWTHORNE'S ROME Henry James Herman Melville Hilda Howells Howells's identity imagination Italian Hours Italian Notebooks Italy JAMES'S ITALY John Carlos John Carlos Rowe Kenyon lady leisure letter literary male body Marble Faun masculinity Melville Melville's Miriam and Donatello modern moral narrative narrator Nathaniel Hawthorne nineteenth-century American novel nude nudity numbers Old Manse political Powers's Praxiteles race racial readers reading represents Robert Roderick Hudson Roman Rowland Ruskin scene Scrope sculpted sculpture seems sexual social space statue Story's studio suggest thorne's tion tourist travels University Press urban Venice William Wetmore Story Woman sculptor women writing York Zenobia