Picturing Italy
Cold War Perspectives in American Travel Writing on Italy, 1948-1960
Abstract
This essay proposes a qualitative analysis of a sample of American travel literature on Italy produced between 1948 and 1960. The objective is to unravel the complex interplay between the evolving post-World War II global scenario and the well-entrenched American perceptions of Italy developed over the 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore, the article scrutinizes the narratives’ thematic and ideological shifts in relation to the backdrop of Cold War politics, the Marshall Plan, and Italy’s own transformation into a republic. It investigates how these geopolitical factors influenced the portrayal of Italy in American travel literature and, conversely, how the traditional romanticized image of Italy persisted or evolved. In addition to highlighting to what extent the language and rhetoric of travel literature interacted with the dictates of contemporary contingencies relying deeply on past images and themes, the essay also attempts to offer some insights into the evolution of American self-perception toward Europe by observing travel writings. Sources for this research are travel articles in newspapers and especially American magazines (Holiday and National Geographic) and travel guides published in the United States between 1949 and 1960.
Copyright (c) 2023 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
RSAJournal applies a CC BY-NC-ND license to all its contributions. This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
- BY: credit must be given to the creator.
- NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
- ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights for their submissions to the journal.
- Authors grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share unedited work for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
