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The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies

Southern Routes in the Grand Tour

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Manuela D’Amore

    1. University of Catania, Catania, Italy

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  • Appeals to historians of culture and ideas, Italian and British history, and English Literature and Comparative Literature
  • Provides a careful analysis of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century academic journals in the emerging field of British travel
  • Focuses on the unexpectedly close relations between the Royal Society and the south of Italy
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies (IIAS)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
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  2. Introduction

    • Manuela D’Amore
    Pages 1-28

  3. Learned Travel before the Grand Tour: The Royal Society 1665–1700

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29
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    2. The Fellows’ Letters from Distant Countries: New Science, the “Other” and Imperialism

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 31-59

    3. News from the Mainland: Mapping Physical and Intellectual Spaces Before the Grand Tour

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 61-83

    4. On the Ancients and the Power of Nature: The Special Case of Italy

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 85-109

  4. The Grand Tour of South Italy: The Discovery of the Two Sicilies 1700–1800

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 111-111
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    2. Southern Paths for Learned Travellers: The Discovery of Herculaneum and of the Neoclassical Mediterranean

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 113-145

    3. Images of Sublime Sicily

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 147-171

    4. From Letters to Memoirs and Travel Accounts: The Fellows as “Cultural Mediators”

      • Manuela D’Amore
      Pages 173-197

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 199-314
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Keywords

About this book

This book illuminates a lesser-known aspect of the British history of travel in the Enlightenment: that of the Royal Society’s special contribution to the “discovery” of the south of Italy in the age of the Grand Tour. By exploring primary source journal entries of philosophy and travel, the book provides evidence of how the Society helped raise the Fellows’ curiosity about the Mediterranean and encouraged travel to the region by promoting cultural events there and establishing fruitful relations with major Italian academic institutions. They were especially devoted to revealing the natural and artistic riches of the Bourbon Kingdom from 1738 to 1780, during which the Roman city of Herculaneum was discovered and Vesuvius and Etna were actively eruptive. Through these examples, the book draws attention to the role that the Royal Society played in establishing cultural networks in Italy and beyond. Tracing a complex path starting in Restoration times, this new insight intodiscourse on learned travel contributes to a more challenging vision of Anglo-Italian relations in the Enlightenment.

Reviews

“This work brings together, practically for the first time, lines of inquiry in two languages, over three centuries, crossing cultural and disciplinary boundaries. The result is a rich account of how the Protestant, rationalist Anglosphere came to terms with a Catholic, romantic, fragmented Italy; and how the British came away fascinated, sometimes appalled, and eventually enthralled. D’Amore augments her findings with an appendix of ten carefully edited letters from the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. This is an invaluable resource for all scholars of this period, of these places, and of the Royal Society’s scientific endeavors.” (Christopher Hodgkins, Professor of Renaissance Literature and Atlantic World Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Catania, Catania, Italy

    Manuela D’Amore

About the author

Manuela D’Amore is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Catania in Italy. The author of literary translations and essays on Early Modern Literature and the Victorian Age, she has also written on British eighteenth-century travelers to Italy, America and the Middle East. Her Essays in Defence of the Female Sex: Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England, co-written with Michèle Lardy (Sorbonne I), appeared in 2012.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies

  • Book Subtitle: Southern Routes in the Grand Tour

  • Authors: Manuela D’Amore

  • Series Title: Italian and Italian American Studies

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55291-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2017

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-55290-3Published: 29 August 2017

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85619-3Published: 03 August 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-55291-0Published: 09 August 2017

  • Series ISSN: 2635-2931

  • Series E-ISSN: 2635-294X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 314

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of Italy, History of Britain and Ireland, Cultural History, World History, Global and Transnational History

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