More Shopping OptionsIn the eyes of the English Romantics, Italy was not a nation but "Italia," a place inhabited by the ancient. Theirs was a view shaped by the eighteenth century, the age of the Grand Tour, when no future nobleman's education was complete without a visit to Venice's carnival, the majestic ruins of the Forum in Rome, or the legendary Mount Vesuvius. Italia Romantica is a vivid history of the English Romantics' love affair with Italy. Through the eyes of Romantic travellers and poets such as Byron, Keats and Shelley, a fascinating picture of pre-unification Italy emerges, struggling to recover after Napoleon and edging towards the Risorgimento. Here is the Italy of idealized antiquity, magnificent but crumbling, somewhat like a gigantic and rather run-down living museum. It is full of bandits, unreformed Catholicism, vignettes of urban and pastoral life, of memorable characters and anecdote.
Roderick Cavaliero is a writer and historian, author of Admiral Satan: The Life and Campaigns of the Bailiff de Suffren and Strangers in the Land: The Rise and Decline of the British Indian Empire (both I.B.Tauris).
Preface * Introduction, "The Land of Departed Fame" * "This Wilderness of a Place for an Invalid," Rome during the Exile of John Keats * "The Niobe of Nations," A Romantic View of Italy * "Behind the Black Veil," Villains & Villainy * "The Silence of the Living," Dante, Tasso and Ariosto in England * "A full-grown Oak in a Grove of Saplings," The Romantic Hero * "Yet Fallen Italy, Rejoice Again," The Awakeners * "What Elysium Have Ye Known?" Poets in Exile * "Metropolis of a Ruined Paradise," Venice, Naples & the Lure of Volcanic Power * "The Kings of Apulia," Bandtray & Brigandage * "The Mingled Beauties of Exalting Greece," Feminising Italy * "Thou Crimson Herald of the Dawn," Italians Arise * Finale, Tempus abire tibi est * Sources * Bibliography
