Magical, Ambiguous and Salacious: Naples in the English Travel Memoirs (1816-1841)

Through an analysis of the accounts of English travellers in Naples between 1816 and 1841, the objective of this paper is to attempt to identify an image of the city and its inhabitants without following the direction of the usual negative stereotypes common to much of the literature associated with the “Grand Tourist”, a literature to which scholars and readers from the 16th to the 19th century were used. The research also aims to demonstrate through previously unknown and unheeded sources that there weren't only those English travellers on their Grand Tour of the post-Restoration Bourbon Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy) looking for an opportunity of comparing their own civilization (which was considered far superior) to a more fragile reality. There were also other British people who had identified, with a critical eye and spirit of observation, the existence of a Naples and a South which didn't merely represent the sum of stereotypes and fallacies handed down through the centuries, and thus refusing the obvious, predictable and false approach given by their own countrymen.