Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c.1690–1820 (Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories, Series Number 19) - Softcover

Sweet, Rosemary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107529204 ISBN 13: 9781107529205

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015

Synopsis

How did eighteenth-century travellers experience, describe and represent the urban environments they encountered as they made the Grand Tour? This fascinating book focuses on the changing responses of the British to the cities of Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice, during a period of unprecedented urbanisation at home. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material, including travel accounts written by women, Rosemary Sweet explores how travel literature helped to create and perpetuate the image of a city; what the different meanings and imaginative associations attached to these cities were; and how the contrasting descriptions of each of these cities reflected the travellers' own attitudes to urbanism. More broadly, the book explores the construction and performance of personal, gender and national identities, and the shift in cultural values away from neo-classicism towards medievalism and the gothic, which is central to our understanding of eighteenth-century culture and the transition to modernity.

About this title

Book Description:

The Grand Tour introduced British travellers to the urban environments of Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice at a time when unprecedented urbanisation was taking place at home. This fascinating study examines how cities were experienced, described and represented in travel literature and how the image of a city evolved.

About the Author:

Rosemary Sweet is Professor of Urban History at the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester. Her previous publications include The English Town, Government, Society and Culture (1999) and Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2004).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1107529204
• ISBN 13: 9781107529205
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342