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Imaging Italy Through the Eyes of Contemporary Australian Travellers (1990-2010)
Author: Roberta Trapè
Date Of Publication: Sep 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3197-0
Isbn: 1-4438-3197-2
For centuries Italy has been the destination of a lifetime for an endless stream of travellers. This book – focussing on the experience of contemporary Australian intellectuals – explores an aspect as of yet scarcely studied within the global phenomenon of travel to Italy, and discovers an image of the country starkly different from the one that prevailed in previous writings. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards there has been a sizeable output of books by Australian writers set in or about Italy. After a meticulous examination of these works, Roberta Trapè has selected and analysed those that she considers the most interesting examples of Australians’ continuing fascination with Italy – works of Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard, and of Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb. Examining the ways the four authors describe Italian places, Imaging Italy looks into what it is that continues to attract Australian writers and artists to the country, and tries to detect new trends in their attitude towards it. The image of Italy that emerges from the most recent works is, no doubt, a superb picture – not flattering but certainly not false – of its contemporary times.

Roberta Trapè holds a PhD in English and American Studies from the University of Florence. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Department of French, Italian and Spanish Studies for five years. She has also written on notions of space in narrating history. Currently resident in Italy, she is applying the ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences to literary texts and researching the role of encounter in the production of sociability.

“Roberta Trapè’s thought provoking study is a timely investigation into the most recent stage of Australian travel to Italy; her hypothesis of the beginning of a new phase which has broken away from the traditional view, makes her work a significant catalyst for further critical thinking.”

– Prof. John Hajek, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne

“Roberta Trapè’s study is an exploration of contemporary Australian travel literature about Italy. She concentrates on writings of these last twenty years in order to identify possible new trends in Australian intellectuals’ attitudes towards Italy and in their way of approaching and responding to this country. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world. Her purpose is mainly achieved through the juxtaposition of works of four authors, and is developed over three chapters, which highlight the differences between Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard on the one side, and two writers of a younger generation, Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb, on the other. Trapè analyses the four writers’ views of Italy by focussing on the ways their narrators describe the country, making the most of her interviews with Dessaix and Robb as well as of an unpublished notebook the former kept during his 1991 and 1995 visit to Italy. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world.”

– Prof. Gaetano Prampolini, Università degli Studi di Firenze

Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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