The Italian Sublime Experience in Goethe and Radcliffe Anonymous College

From the second half of the 19th century, a mythical version of Italy took hold of the European collective imagination. In the mind of foreign Romantic writers, Italy became the symbol of the glorious past and the place of landscapes of romance. The beauties of Italy were perceived as broadening the cultural horizons and healing the spirits of travelers. Indeed, as Samuel Johnson, writing at the time, noted, “A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what is expected a man should see” (qtd. in Boswell 325). An essential stop on the Grand Tour, which was part of the educational path of young aristocrats, Italy was fascinating also for its pastoral landscapes and warm light, which became subjects for many European painters and writers. In facts, Romantic artists tended to idealize Italy, perceiving in its majestic antiquities and uncontaminated nature something of the sublime so that “reference to the sublime supplied one of the primary strategies adopted by travelers in order to describe the terrain of Italy” (Chard 110). Both Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s travel narrative Italian Journey and Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian contributed to this romanticized construction of...