American Travel Literature, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Italian Tour, 1824–62

Examines tourists’ aesthetic responses in the context of US nation formation American Travel Literature analyses tourist writings about Italy from 1824 to 1862 to explain what roles transatlantic travel, aesthetic response and the genre of tourist writing played in the formation of the United States. The Italian tour and its textual and visual expressions were forms through which predominantly white, northeastern elites dreamed their way into national identity and cultural authority. Its interdi