<< 1  | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 >>   Il Viaggio in Italia.    Whetstone fu in Italia nel 1580(31). It became the fashion of Elizabeth ’s time for young men of family, after a few years at college, to travel abroad, and especially to Italy , to complete their education. The travellers were (...) men who visited foreign countries in the spirit of Bacon’s essay, Of Travel, really to study and observe...(32)     L’importanza di questi viaggi sul continente era fortementesentita dai giovani letterati del tempo, che visitarono in numero sempre crescente le città europee: Parigi, Venezia, Vienna, Roma. Whestone arrivò in Italia dalla Francia e soggiornò a Torino, in una città del Ducato di Milano sulle rive del Po, di cui non cita il nome, poi a Bologna, a Roma, a Napoli, a Tivoli, a Loreto, a Ravenna e a Venezia(33). Some wil (perchance more of envy to heare a stranger commended, then of pitie to bemone my hard fortune, or fowle usage) say, I have as just cause to complaine of iniuries received at Roane, Rome and Naples , as to commend the vertues and good entertainment of Segnior Philoxenus...(34)   Il risultato letterario di questo viaggio è appunto, An Heptameron of Civil Discourses(35) pubblicato nel 1582, ma ultimato intorno alla fine del 1581, esattamente un anno dopo il suo soggiorno italiano. Nella presentazione del suo libro, infatti, Whetstone dice:  ...I have with well advised Iudgement, bethought me of such memorable Questions and devices, as I heard and sawbpresented, in this most noble Italian Gentlemans Pallace, the Christmass past...(36)    Whetstone, da perfetto uomo del suo tempo, viaggiava per apprendere, esprimendo, così, la propria concreta volontà di assimilare modi, costumi, tradizioni, che non gli appartenevano. Da questo punto di vista, “he is to be another Italianate Englishman an importer of literary materials and ideals from the warm South”(37). Il Rinascimento italiano gliene offriva l’occasione e il materiale, mentre tutta la cultura italiana influenzava le lettere, i costumi, i modi di vita e anche il dramma elisabettiano: Some of the playwriters (...) were men of travel: “Italianated” Englishmen, who returned home with their heads full of the ideas and culture of the Ford and Marston do not hesitate to introduce Italian dialogue into their plays, for many of the dramatists were University men, and the Italian language was studied at Oxford and Cambridge along with Latin and Greek(38) << 1  | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 >> Note:   31 Riferimenti a questo viaggio si trovano oltre che, naturalmente, nell’Aurelia (1593), anche in The Honourable Reputation of a Souldier (1585), nella dedica a Sir William Russell; in The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587), pagg. 58-62, in J. P. Collier edition, e in The English Myrror (1586), pagg. 156-58 e 165. 32 M. A. Scott, op. cit., (II), chap. I, part. II, pag. XLIII. 33 Cfr. Cecioni, “Un adattamento di due novelle del Boccaccio nello Heptameron of Civil Discourses di George Whetstone (1582), in Galigani (a c.d.), op. cit., pag. 185, nota 3. 34 Aurelia, The Paragon of Plesure and Princely Delights, ed. by R.Jones, London 1593, “To the friendly Readers”, F. A2 v. 35 I edizione di Aurelia (1593). 36 G. Whetstone, op. cit., “To the friendly Readers”, A2 r. 37 T. C. Izard, op. cit., chap. II, pag. 85. La quantità di scritti letterari italiani, soprattutto novellistica, divulgati in Inghilterra nel XVI secolo era veramente enorme. J. J. Jusserand, op. cit., chap. II, pag. 85: “The Italian novels had the better of it in Elizabethan times; they were found not only ‘in every shop’, but in every house; translations of them were easily reading of Shakespeare, and as they had an immense influence not only in emancipating the genius of t h e dramatists of the period, but, what was of equall importance, in preparing an audience for them...” Con una descrizione molto suggestiva Jusserand nota come i costumi si adeguassero, ormai, a quelli continentali (pagg. 88-89): “‘When the armour, worn less often, began to grow rusty in the great halls and the nobles, coming forth from their coasts-in-mail like the butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all gliste- ning in silk, pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were organized, and the role of the women was enlarged”. 38 M. A. Scott, op. cit., (I), Baltimora 1895, introd. pag. 3.