Translating Italy: English Fiction and the Romantic Ideal, 1820-1837

The pathos which characterised English poetic treatments of Italy in the 182os was also a feature of the "Italian"novel in the same period. Though they had the example of Byron before them, the tendency of the novelists' exploration of Italy in these years was towards a feeling that any such creative relationship with Italy as Byron had achieved was purely exceptional, and that the more general truth lay rather in the direction of Madame de Stael's finding, that the life-values represented by Italy were tragically unattainable to the northern spirit, however great its yearning for them.\r\nLord Normanby was the first English writer to take up seriously the Corinne theme, particularly in his very popular collection of stories, The English in ltaly (1825). Normanby spent two years in Italy as a young man, when his liberal political views had made him embarrassing to his family, and in these stories he cleverly and attractively exploited the English enthusiasm for Italy at a time when "Jenkinsons and Tomkinsons tumble down the Alps in living avalanches."(Vol.2, p.221)The best of the stories is the first, L' Amoroso. Though rather contrived, melodramatic and moralising, the lightness and economy ofits style make a delightful contrast with most English fiction of the time. The heroine, Matilda Euston, full of Romantic notions, persuades her parents to make the tour of Europe, and becomes infatuated with Italy and contemptuous of her own country. The description of her initial response to Italy is both a good specimen of Normanby's ironic style and a partial portrait of the first of a long line of post-Romantic Anglo-Saxon heroines which includes James's Daisy Miller, Forster's Lilia Herriton and Lawrence's Alvina Houghton.