The Sicily of the Voyage Pittoresque, with a Quick (and Very "Personal") Gaze at the Travel Literature

Abstract

Travel literature does not constitute an objective source: neither the images nor the texts escape the cliches of the time in which they were written. In the age of the Grand Tour, western culture appropriated the history of Sicily and the South, andit did so by selecting and distorting data and information. From a personal point of view, the author underlines the legacies, born between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which still condition current historiography, perception of places and the collective imagination.