VIAGGI IN GRECIA TRA ILLUSIONE E REALTÀ (OTTOCENTO E NOVECENTO)
JOURNEYS TO GREECE BETWEEN ILLUSION AND REALITY (19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES)

Summary/Abstract: Journeys to Greece between Illusion and Reality (19th and 20th Centuries). When leaving on a voyage, every voyager travels with a cultural luggage orienting his itinerary. This necessity is more vividly felt by the 19th- and 20th-century Italian traveler leaving for Greece thanks to the leading role played by Greek and Latin works in his education. Analysing a series of five extracts belonging to different literary genres – some letters by Santorre di Santa Rosa, Laudi by Gabriele D’Annunzio (Maia, 1903), a travel tale by Giovanni Comisso (Approdo in Grecia, 1954), a travel journal by Lalla Romano (Diario di Grecia, 1959) and some chapters from a novel by Andrea De Carlo (Due di due, 1989) – first, I focus on the discrepancy between their mental concept of Greece (a Hellas full of classical myths) and the disappointing reality they often encountered; then, I consider how the search for a “mental” Greece has been progressively abandoned since the 1950s in favour of accepting a more serene reality and even elaborating a new myth which has displaced the classical intellectual one.

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