Published by the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome. Distributed by Eddy.se AB.

City of the Soul. The literary making of Rome

Edited by Sabrina Norlander Eliasson & Stefano Fogelberg Rota

How Rome was experienced and conveyed in travel literature from the centuries preceding and following the period of the Grand Tour is the subject of this book. Its point of departure was the international and interdisciplinary conference The City of the Soul. The literary making of Rome, held at the Swedish Institute in Rome (9–10 September, 2010).

The authors of the 13 essays contained in the book examine the writings of both renowned and less known travellers from different countries (Sweden, France, England, United States, etc.). The great variety of angles and perspectives presented in the book depends on the different motives and expectations of the examined authors. Their writings (travelogues, poetry, novels, letters, intimate diaries, etc.) show the Eternal City not only as a topographic reality but also as a complex myth embracing the idea of Western civilisation.

Contents

Introduction

Sabrina Norlander Eliasson & Stefano Fogelberg Rota | The literary making of an eternal city

Setting the premises

Anders Cullhed | “Rome as a trope”. Some early modern examples

Exemplum virtutis. Rome as a textbook and a social arena in the 17th and 18th centuries

Anna Bortolozzi | Two Oxenstiernas in Rome. Sightseeing, public performances and artistic education
Anne-Madeleine Goulet | L’immagine di Roma nella corrispondenza delle sorelle de la Trémoille (1675–1701)
Stefano Fogelberg Rota | La Roma arcade del senatore svedese Nils Bielke

The many facets of the Grand Tour. Assimilation, prejudice and repulsion in the 18th century

Rossana Caira Lumetti | Sognare Roma / vedere Roma. Il Viaggio in Italia di Carl Fredrik Fredenheim
Chloe Chard | Intensity and irony in a serious city

Rome in the 19th-century novel. A city of metaphors

Letizia Norci Cagiano | Trasfigurazioni di Roma nell’immaginario di Stendhal
Elżbieta Foeller-Pituch | Henry James’s cultural capital: Rome as a moral testing ground in his 1870–1880 fiction
Anna De Biasio | Hawthorne’s Rome and the US high cultural sphere

Whose city? Nostalgia and politics in the 19th century

Martin Olin | Remembering a Roman tavern. Food, wine and nostalgia in paintings and memoirs by Scandinavian artists 1830–1870
Fredrik Thomasson | Art, nationalism and politics during occupation and Restoration Rome: “O che razza infame è mai quella dei leccaculi!”
Sabrina Norlander Eliasson | Civis romanus sum. The Roman nobility and the loss of l’ancien regime in the writings of the Swedish Marquis Claes Lagergren

The novelist’s perspective

Carina Burman | Mirroring the 19th century. The Scandinavian travelogue and the adventures of Euthanasia Bondeson

Bibliographical information

Sabrina Norlander Eliasson & Stefano Fogelberg Rota, eds., City of the Soul. The literary making of Rome (Suecoromana. Studia artis historiae Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae, 8), Stockholm 2015. ISSN: 1102-7940. ISBN: 978-91-7042-182-2. Hardcover: 205 pages.