Description
Book SynopsisAn important locus for English-speaking writers, the region of Tuscany is also well represented in the Italian literary canon. In Tuscan Spaces, Silvia Ross focuses on constructions of Tuscany in twentieth-century Italian literature and juxtaposes them with English prose works by such authors as E.M. Forster and Frances Mayes to expose the complexity of literary representation centred on a single milieu.
Ross uses the works of writers such as Federigo Tozzi, Aldo Palazzeschi, Vasco Pratolini, and Elena Gianini Belotti, to seek out alternative visions of Tuscan space and emphasizes that each author fashions the region in a manner which reflects their personal poetics, background, and experiences. Theories of cultural geography, space, travel, and narrative contribute to Ross''s consideration of the dualisms commonly employed in writings about Tuscany, such as country/city, nature/culture, female/male, and self/other, all of which are in turn affected by her interrogati
Trade Review
'This book presents readers with a number of innovative representations of the region... A well written and interesting book that provides historical context and geographical specificity to a subject that has long engaged writers, directors, tourists, and literary theorists.' -- Elisabetta Tesser Studies in Travel Writing vol 16:02:2012
Table of Contents
Table of Contents AcknowledgementsivList of Illustrations vIntroduction11. The Country and the City: Vertigo and Legendary Psychasthenia in Tozzi's Tuscany 312. Palazzeschi's Spaces of Difference: The Materassi Sisters at the Window783. Vasco Pratolini's Florentine Spaces of Exclusion1194. The Stendhal Syndrome, or The Horror of Being Foreign in Florence1625. 'Going Native': Tuscan Houses and Italian Others in Contemporary American Travel Writing 2196. The Tuscan Countryside: Nature and the (Non)Domestic in Elena Gianini Belotti 260Afterword: Further Tuscan Spaces of Alterity298Works Cited307
