The image of the Mediterranean figures prominently in American history, culture, society and imagination ever since the very beginnings of the US. This work focuses on a specific facet of the development of tourism in the US during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the cruise in the Mediterranean taken by Americans over that period of time. Cruising is a special kind of touristic travel, which reached its heyday after World War II, but became gradually popular with Americans during the nineteenth century. This essay considers four instances of such reports signaling the importance of the cruise in the touristic and cultural American imagination. The earliest text is Nathaniel Parker Willis’ Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean, recounting a sea voyage accomplished in 1833, but pieced together and published as an autonomous volume twenty years later, in 1853. The second, quite obviously, is Mark Twain’s celebrated Innocents Abroad: the story of his Atlantic crossing and cruise through the Mediterranean he accomplished on board the steamship Quaker City in 1867 and published in book form in 1869. The third work is the recently discovered text by Edith Wharton The Cruise of the Vanadis, published posthumously in 1991, but written as early as 1888. The fourth text is A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel, which Samuel Gamble Bayne published in 1909. What the four texts have in common, and what makes them symptomatic of the emergence of a new touristic cultural logic, is their taking the Mediterranean as a setting in which to display American vogues, experiences, dramas, and reflections.

“The pleasure of travel is in the fancy”: Cruising the Mediterranean in the American Imagination, 1853– 1909 / Martinez, Carlo. - (2024), pp. 33-50. [10.3726/b22216].

“The pleasure of travel is in the fancy”: Cruising the Mediterranean in the American Imagination, 1853– 1909

Carlo Martinez
2024

Abstract

The image of the Mediterranean figures prominently in American history, culture, society and imagination ever since the very beginnings of the US. This work focuses on a specific facet of the development of tourism in the US during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the cruise in the Mediterranean taken by Americans over that period of time. Cruising is a special kind of touristic travel, which reached its heyday after World War II, but became gradually popular with Americans during the nineteenth century. This essay considers four instances of such reports signaling the importance of the cruise in the touristic and cultural American imagination. The earliest text is Nathaniel Parker Willis’ Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean, recounting a sea voyage accomplished in 1833, but pieced together and published as an autonomous volume twenty years later, in 1853. The second, quite obviously, is Mark Twain’s celebrated Innocents Abroad: the story of his Atlantic crossing and cruise through the Mediterranean he accomplished on board the steamship Quaker City in 1867 and published in book form in 1869. The third work is the recently discovered text by Edith Wharton The Cruise of the Vanadis, published posthumously in 1991, but written as early as 1888. The fourth text is A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel, which Samuel Gamble Bayne published in 1909. What the four texts have in common, and what makes them symptomatic of the emergence of a new touristic cultural logic, is their taking the Mediterranean as a setting in which to display American vogues, experiences, dramas, and reflections.
2024
Travellers in the Mediterranean: Linguistic and Cultural Encounters
978-2-8076-1234-1
Travelogue; tourism; cruise in the Mediteranean; nineteenth American literaure.
02 Pubblicazione su volume::02a Capitolo o Articolo
“The pleasure of travel is in the fancy”: Cruising the Mediterranean in the American Imagination, 1853– 1909 / Martinez, Carlo. - (2024), pp. 33-50. [10.3726/b22216].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1729103
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