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'This is a theoretically rich exploration of a central topic in American cultural history. By examining how a host of antebellum American authors treated the Italian landscape in their works, Bailey reveals not only the complexity of their aesthetic practices, but also their key contributions to social and political developments in the United States.' Larry J. Reynolds, Texas A&M University Examines tourists' aesthetic responses in the context of US nation formation American Travel Literature traces nineteenth-century US representations of Italy, bringing perspectives from art history and aesthetics to historicise aesthetic practices. It draws connections between tourist writing and visual culture as means of understanding the depth of Americans' turn towards visual iconography in articulating social and national identities. Its interdisciplinary methodology draws on antebellum visual culture, tourist practices, and shifting class and gender identities to describe tourism and tourist writing as shapers of an elite (and then normative) national subjectivity. Bringing perspectives from art history and aesthetics, the book historicises aesthetic practices by tracing nineteenth-century US representations of Italy. It draws connections between tourist writing and visual culture as means of understanding the depth of Americans' turn towards visual iconography in articulating social and national identities. Brigitte Bailey is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, with research interests in 19th-century US travel, urban, and transatlantic writings. Cover image: Italy, Daniel Huntington, 1843 (c) Smithsonian American Art Museum Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-3283-2 Barcode
About the author
Brigitte Bailey is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. She is the co-editor, with Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, of
Margaret Fuller and Her Circles (University of New Hampshire Press, 2013) and also a co-editor, with Beth L. Lueck and Lucinda L. Damon-Bach, of
Transatlantic Women: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and Great Britain (University of New Hampshire Press, 2012).
Summary
American Travel Literature analyses US tourist writings about Italy from 1824 to 1862 to explain what roles transatlantic travel, aesthetic response, and the genre of tourist writing played in the formation of the United States.
