Dupaty et l’Italie des voyageurs sensibles éd. par Jan Herman, et al (review)

Reviews 273 d’une providence”(138),and that his descriptive intentions have moved beyond rational analysis towards a more subjective expression of the universe as a “totalité cohérente” (147).Guyot justifies his examination of Chateaubriand’s Itinéraire,already exhaustively studied by others, by the particular focus of his inquiry; indeed, there is an analogous dimension here to the Itinéraire, which by 1811 was already tracing a path well-worn by European travelers.Chateaubriand expresses boredom with the sights he encounters and recognizes that readers’expectations have begun to surpass a pedestrian, chronological narrative of date and place.Accordingly,his analogies depart from the traditional practice of comparing extraordinary phenomena observed by the traveler in foreign lands to familiar counterparts in the land of the reader: Chateaubriand seeks more personal and meaningful correspondences between the present and the past, whether drawing on his own previous travels or his encyclopedic knowledge of Mediterranean history and legend. The focus becomes the author himself: with the moi at the center of the work, Chateaubriand moves the genre firmly into the domain of literary autobiography . Guyot extends his study with a fascinating look at the use of architectural language to describe mountains and glaciers by visitors to Chamonix. Buttressed by Ricœur’s work on metaphor,Guyot asserts that the rehabilitation of figures of similarity comes about from the recognition of their power to stimulate interest and inspire curiosity in a way that sterile scientific fact cannot. While his broad conclusions may surprise no one, Guyot’s meticulously researched book provides a penetrating look into the works in question and amply documents the early development of romantic travel writing as a genre. Furman University (SC) William G. Allen Herman, Jan, Kris Peeters, et Paul Pelckmans, éd. Dupaty et l’Italie des voyageurs sensibles. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. ISBN 978-90-420-3524-9. Pp. 278. 60 a. Using their earlier work about Enlightenment popes as a model, the editors compiled and published submissions from a themed international conference for this volume. The subject concerns mostly nonfictional-inspired accounts of travels in the Italian peninsula during the latter part of the eighteenth century through the opening decades of the nineteenth. Charles Mercier Dupaty (1746–88) is the inspiration of the eighteen essays, even if his name scarcely or never appears in several. Unlike other travelers of his era, he chose to express his impressions rather than solely relate facts about what he saw and did. It is this sensibilité in his Lettres sur l’Italie, published the year of his death, which permeated pre- and post-Revolution writings about the peninsular Grand Tour. The first four pieces deal uniquely with le Président Dupaty. As a magistrate at the Bordeaux parlement, he sought out Italian examples of judicial and legal reform that might motivate institutional change in France. Visits included the usual museums and archeological sites as well as hospitals, jails, and prisons. He was not insensitive to the misery he witnessed and was impressed by reforms enacted by the good prince of Tuscany.Another two contributions discuss specific places. One concerns a practical guidebook of Rome, the Itinerario italiano (1801), and the other examines the attraction of “les âmes sensibles” (97) to Tivoli, a site that evoked nostalgia for antiquity for Dupaty and others. Three essays refer to Italy’s presence in the works of specific Romantic authors.In Madame de Staël’s Corinne (1807) and Madame de Krüdener’s Valérie (1803–04), the culture and climate of the peninsula function as backdrops for the tragedies of love and death. Like Dupaty, Chateaubriand used the letter, not the novel, to convey his impressions. Simple notes juxtaposed with personal reactions comprised his Voyage en Italie, an epistolary memoir of his journey in 1803– 04. The remaining nine essays treat a variety of travel accounts composed primarily by persons not readily recognized. Four stand out for their content and articulate style. By order of Napoleon in 1799, the sculptor Philippe-Laurent Roland went to Italy on an art-scouting/stealing mission. His journal relates both professional and personal details. A comparison between Dupaty’s earlier and Auguste Creuzé de Lesser’s later...