Description
Book SynopsisA collection of writings about the Grand Tour that is original and innovative, straying from the usual path of aristocrats and churches.
Trade ReviewTo call a book about the Grand Tour 'Tristes Plaisirs' shows originality. Usually, the dissipaions of the Society of Dilettanti and other milordi are characterised as a rollicking, aristocratic equivalent of a gap year, but the travellers' accounts anthologised in this book show that pleasure seeking could also be a serious affair.'
Not only is this book as well researched as one would expect from its scholarly authors, but it is lso lavishly illustrated to illuminate the points they make: a dozen colour plates and more than 100 black-and-white drawings and photographs make the reader feel they have been on a grand tour themselves.
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Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
I: Triste plaisir
II: The tropes of travel: how to avoid languor in language
1. Pleasure
I: The foreign and the familiar
II: Tourism: the management of pleasure
2. Rising and sinking in sublime places
3. Danger and destabilization
I: Indolent delicious reverie
II: Disease, debilitation and delusions of revival
III: Banditti
4. Art, unease and life
I: Odd spectators
II: Sculpture studios; socializing with works of art
5. Gastronomy, gusto and the geography of the haunted
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