Backward glances
Subtitle: exploring Italy, reinterpreting America (1831-1866)
By: Leonardo Buonomo.
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Madison, NJ; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 115
Subjects: American literature -- Italian influences.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Travelers' writings, American -- History and criticism.; Americans -- Italy -- History -- 19th century.; Travel writing -- History -- 19th century.; Italy -- In literature.
Description: This study shows how, in the nineteenth century, Americans often described and narrated Italy as a way of reflecting on their own country and national identity in genres as various as travel literature, fiction, poetry, and journalism. Indeed, maintains author Leonardo Buonomo, Italy helped the Americans to relativize, if not redefine, the very idea of Americanness.

The texts discussed here are James Fenimore Cooper's The Bravo (1831), Henry T. Tuckerman's The Italian Sketch Book (1835), Margaret Fuller's travel letters for The New York Tribune (1847-49), Julia Ward Howe's Passion Flowers (1854), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1860), Henry P. Leland's Americans in Rome (1863), and William Dean Howells's Venetian Life (1866).

Reading them as both literary and ethnographic documents, Buonomo contends that, although the texts were enjoyed primarily for their poetic vistas and panoramas, they also provided a running commentary on Italian customs and character.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-112) and index.