Introductory description

For centuries Italy has been a favoured destination for travellers, from medieval pilgrims to the Grand Tourists of the 1700s and 1800s. More recently it has become a site of mass tourism while millions more experience 'Destination Italy' by staying in one of the hyperreal hotels of Las Vegas or by strolling through Renaissance Florence in the virtual world of a video game. In this module we will explore how Italy has been constructed in popular imagination through the accounts of both foreign travellers to the peninsular and by Italian writers. We will interrogate common notions of travel as a means of self-fulfillment and quest for authenticity and consider the impact that gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and class have on travel. The module also examines the ethical and environmental implications of travel and considers alternatives such as ecotourism, slow travel and virtual travel. Discussions will be informed by theoretical works on travel, identity, postmodernism, postcolonial studies and semiotics.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction to travel and travel writing studies: questions of genre and truth
Week 2: Destination Italy: the Grand Tour
Week 3: Destination Italy: contemporary tourism
Week 4: Italian domestic travel writing
Week 5: Peripheries and margins
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Colonial and postcolonial travel
Week 8: Ecotravel and Slow tourism
Week 9: Travels in hyperreality
Week 10: Virtual travel: from the stereoscope to Assassin's Creed

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Level 6: Demonstrate the ability to critically analyse and evaluate writings on travel in English and in Italian applying theoretical concepts such as semiotics, postmodernism and postcoloniality.
• Level 6: Demonstrate sophisticated knowledge and critical understanding of key concepts in travel writing studies.
• Levels 5&6: Build on research skills, academic writing skills and communication skills and present ideas in a variety of forms to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• Level 6: Demonstrate an ethical awareness of how gender, ethnicity, and class impact on the ability to travel and write about travel showing sensitivity to the cultural and linguistic context. Critically evaluate the environmental and societal impact of travel.
• Level 6: Apply and extend their knowledge of Italian travel writing to other contexts.
• Level 5: Demonstrate the ability to critically analyse writings on travel by applying relevant theoretical concepts.
• Level 5: Demonstrate knowledge and critical understanding of key concepts in travel writing studies.
• Level 5: Demonstrate awareness of the way that gender, ethnicity, and class impact on the ability to travel and write about travel showing sensitivity to the cultural and linguistic context. Reflect on the environmental and societal impact of travel.
• Level 5: Apply knowledge obtained from lecture presentations and seminar discussions to other contexts.

Indicative reading list

Primary Texts (class discussion will be based on extracts of the following primary texts)

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Italian Journey [trans. W.H Auden & E. Mayer] (London: Penguin, 1970)
Germaine de Staël, Corrine, or Italy (Oxford: OUP, 1998)
E.M.Forster, Room with a View (London: Penguin, 1986 [1908])
Antonio Stoppani, Il bel paese (Agnelli, 1876) extracts
Guido Piovene, Viaggio in Italia (Mondadori, 1957) extracts
Anna Maria Ortese, La lente scura (Milan: Adelphi, 2004) extracts
Stefania Scateni, ed., Periferie: Viaggio ai margini delle città (Rome-Bari: Laterza 2006)
Fabrizia Ramondino, In viaggio (Turin: Einaudi, 1995) extracts
Marisa Baratti, Era una volta il… Ricordi d’Eritrea dal 1919 al 1989 (Milan: Montedit, 2003) extracts
Dell’Oro, Erminia, Asmara addio (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1997; 1st edn 1988) extracts
Rino Bianco & Igiaba Scego, Roma negata: percorsi postcoloniali nella città (Rome: Ediesse, 2014)
Petrignani, Sandra, Ultima India (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1996) extracts
Laura Pariani, Il piatto dell’angelo (Milan: Giunti, 2013)
Paolo Rumiz, Appia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2016)
Andrea Bocconi & Claudio Visentin, In viaggio con l’asino (Parma: Ugo Guanda 2009)
Tiziano Terzani, Un indovino mi disse (Milan: Longanesi, 1994) extracts
Umberto Eco, ‘Travels in Hyperreality’, in Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, trans. William Weaver (London: Minerva), 1-58;

Secondary Reading

Roland Barthes, ‘The Blue Guide’, in Mythologies (1957)
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
Zygmunt Bauman, ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity’, in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 18-36
Blanton, Casey, Travel Writing: The Self and the World (London: Routledge, 2002)
Borm, Jan, ‘Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology’, in Perspectives on Travel Writing, ed. by Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 13-26
Erik Champion, Playing with the Past (London: Springer, 2011)
Michael Clancy, ed., Slow Tourism, Food and Cities: Pace and the Search for the “Good Life”, (Routledge: Abingdon, 2018).
Robert Clarke, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Jessa Crispin, ‘How not to be Elizabeth Gilbert: Men, Women, and Travel Writing’, Boston Review, 20 July 2015. http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/jessa-crisipin-female-travel-writing
Jonathan Culler ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’, in Framing the Sign: Criticism and its Institutions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), pp. 153-67
De Botton, Alain, The Art of Travel (London: Penguin, 2003)
Charles Forsdick, Zoe Kinsley & Kathryn Walchester, eds., Keywords for Travel Writing Studies: A Critical Glossary (London: Anthem, 2019)
Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick & Ludmilla Kostova, eds., Travel and Ethics: Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2013).
Stephanie Malia Hom, The Beautiful Country: Tourism and the Impossible State of Destination Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)
Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. by Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1-17
Douglas M. Klahr, ‘Traveling via Rome through the Stereoscope: Reality, Memory, and Virtual Travel’, Architectural Histories. 2016: 4(1)
Dean MacCannell, The Ethics of Sightseeing (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011)
Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1999; 1st edn 1976)
Madelene McWha, Warwick Frost & Jennifer Laing (2017) Sustainable travel writing? Exploring the ethical dilemmas of twenty-first-century travel writers, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25:10, 1401-1417
Catharine Mee, Interpersonal encounters in contemporary travel writing : French and Italian perspectives (London: Anthem Press, 2014).
Jennie Germann Molz, Playing online and Between the Lines: round-the-world websites as virtual places to play’, in Tourism Mobilities: places to play, places in play, ed. by Mimi Sheller & John Urry (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004), pp. 169-180.
Monga, Luigi, ‘Travel and Travel Writing: An Historical Overview of Hodoeporics’, Annali d’Italianistica, 14 (1996), 6-54
Gaia de Pascale, Slow Travel: Alla ricerca del lusso di perdere tempo (Milan: Adriano Salani, 2008)
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992) extracts
Sylvia Ross, Tuscan Spaces: Literary Constructions of Space (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010)
Mimi Sheller & John Urry, eds., Tourism mobilities: places to play, places in play (London: Routledge, 2004).
Edward W Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003, 1st ed. 1978)
John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990)

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Italian culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of both travel writing on Italy, Italian travel writers, and theoretical perspectives on travel will be enhanced through lectures and seminars.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.