"The Grand Tour; or a Room with a View": Italy in the Imagination of Others

Italy has for many decades been the place to which people traveled in order to both encounter something quite alien to their own identities and yet a place where they were supposed to find themselves, indeed to construct their proper selves. This course introduces students to some of the most important texts that describe this "grand tour." We will read texts (both literary and travelogues by Goethe, De Stael, Henry James, Hawthorne, Freud, among others, as well as view films (such as "A Room With a View:) - all in order to determine the ways in which Italy "means" for the cultural imagination of Western civilization. For first year students only.