Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Travelers' writing, Italian”

After the Italian Unification in 1861, farmers, masons, artisans – mostly from southern Italy – decided to leave their villages and their families to emigrate to America. At the time, America was a country that was the subject of travelers’ legends that recounted how people there could achieve economic stability and settle the foundations to support their families. Pascal D’Angelo and his father were migrants from Abruzzi who decided to pursue the American dream: his autobiography, “Son of Italy,” tells of the magic of Abruzzi and the dream, which then became a nightmare, that he found himself living once he arrived in America. According to his autobiography, daily life in America was a nightmare based on survival and strenuous work on the construction sites where Italian immigrants earned little more than a dollar an hour. On those construction sites, Pascal D’Angelo discovered that his talents were not building houses, working with concrete and shovel, but in poetry and writing. However, before being able to show these qualities, he recounted in his autobiography the illusion of the American dream and the misery that Italians in America, known at the time by the derogatory names such as wop and dago, were forced to endure. Pascal D’Angelo, after quitting his job on the construction sites, had to accept many rejections from editors before being allowed to publish his poems and, in this article, it will be investigated how he managed to fulfill his dream and how he experienced the Italian migration in the U.S.A. The methodology of this text is based on comparative literature within the field of Italian American critical studies: Pascal D’Angelo’s autobiography is analyzed in relation to the studies of Durante, Fontanella and Luconi. Moreover, Pascal D’Angelo’s autobiography is compared with the novels’ content of John Fante and Pietro Di Donato, who were two writers still representing the pillars of Italian American literature. The objective of this study is to focus on Pascal D’Angelo peculiar immigrant experience because the literary criticism on him is scarce, despite the fact that he is a unique example of a “colonial writer” and deserves to be studied for his innovative content: it is shown how, through his writing, he was able to become the voice of the Italian immigrants by narrating his daily life without filters and letting the reader experience the tragedy of the daily work of Italian immigrants in America.

Purpose Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, the travel sector has faced an intense challenge, making tourism one of the most affected sectors at the time of writing. Based on the results of a survey administered to a sample of 700 Italian tourists, this paper aims to acquire an empirical understanding of key challenges for the travel and tourism sector in the coming months and the possible responses of tourist cities. Design/methodology/approach To study tourism after the pandemic, OUT (University of Naples Tourism Research Center) has created an online survey to answer the following questions: What will tourism be like after the pandemic? What will the main changes in travel behaviors be? What role will new information technologies play in future tourism? Are there territorial differences based on the spread of the virus? Findings The pandemic has inevitably affected everyone’s tourist choices, regardless of how much their specific area of residence has been impacted by the virus. Consequently, it will significantly influence travelers’ experiences. The Italian tourists who were survey respondents are aware that physical distancing rules will probably remain in effect for an extended time and, therefore, they cannot imagine future tourism not conditioned by these measures. This does not mean that Italians will give up tourism in the short-medium term, however. Indeed, the research data highlight the resilient character of tourism in that it is transformed but does not cease to exist. Originality/value By studying the future through a sociological approach, it is possible to identify how the COVID-19 emergency will impact tourism and how both the form and social meaning of mobility will be conditioned. On the basis of the data, the analysis will be directed from the present to the post-pandemic horizon, hypothesizing possible scenarios for the future of tourism and providing some possible policy indications.

Abstract Leone Caetani’s life (1869-1935) was definitely not a common one. Prince of Teano and duke of Sermoneta, he was immersed on the cream of Italian and international aristocracy of his age age of colonialism, age of adventurous travelling. On the tracks of his travels in the Middle East and in the far West, his studies and his personal writings, we tried to sketch this extraordinary figure of Orientalist on the field, of refined and renowned historian of the first period of Islam. A life through the life itself. This — we imagine — may be the right keyword to interpret his natural aptitude for extreme travels from East to West and the back to East — in the Sinai (1888-1889) and Sahara deserts (1890), in the Far West and the Rocky Mountains of Canada (1891), and back in Persia (1894) and India (1899) —, his pulsating interest for the Arabs and their origins, his craving desire to be “with boots in the mud” and “geography in his pocket”. Versed in the languages he used them to get in touch with cultures and peoples almost unknown — such as the Yazidi —, steadily convinced that only a first-hand experience could give back the exact taste of the truth. He was among the first Italians to explore the Sinai and the first Italian traveller ever in the sands of the Algerian Sahara.

This paper describes the encounters that Italian travellers, explorers, and traders had with the peoples of the Malay world at the turn of the century. In particular, it focuses on the linguistic descriptions and observations made by Italian explorers of the languages spoken in the places they visited and included in their travel writings. In addition to the pioneering work of Pigafetta, the Italian scribe who followed Magellan on his voyage around the world and produced the first “Italian-Malay vocabulary” in 1521, other linguistic descriptions and observations were made by Giovanni Gaggino, a merchant who compiled an Italian-Malay dictionary in Singapore, Odoardo Beccari, a naturalist who offered reflections on the Malay spoken in Borneo, and Celso Cesare Moreno, a ship captain and adventurer. Elio Modigliani, in his travels to Nias, Enggano, Mentawai, and the Batak country, provided detailed information on the local languages spoken in these islands in North and West Sumatra, while Giovanni Battista Cerruti, an explorer and ship captain who visited Singapore, Batavia, and the Malay Peninsula, commented on the languages, as did Emilio Cerruti, who travelled to the Moluccas and Papua. This paper focuses on how these languages were described and perceived by these nineteenth-century Italian travellers. It concludes that these explorers were all united by a common necessity, namely the importance of speaking local languages in order to be able to interact with the people they met on their travels. Malay, in particular, was always viewed positively as an international language, a powerful tool for communicating, learning, and interacting with others, and a beautiful language. Conversely, the other minority languages were seen as poor and simple, but still a powerful tool to overcome barriers and lay the foundations for intercultural communication.

This article examines the writings of Italian travellers in Canada and discusses how they affected and affect the images of Canadian cities in Italian culture. The article begins by looking at recent writings by one famous Italian author, Pier Vittorio Tondelli, and then moves back to examine his predecessors in the Italian literary production on Canada. In this manner, the article tries to see whether it is possible to sketch a genealogy of Italian descriptions of Canadian cities.

The paper analyses the use of Italian as a literary language in the literature of European travel to the Ottoman Empire during the late Ranaissance. The choice of Italian will be explained as the link between its diffusion in Europe as a language of culture and its practical uses in the Mediterranean as a diplomatic and commercial code or as a tool of religious propaganda. During the late Renaissance, travels to the Ottoman Empire were the continuation of theperegrinatio academicaand theGrand Tourto Italy of high-educated European scholars. In light of this premises, I will present different versions, both manuscripts and in print, of the multilingualrelationeby the Pole Wojciech Bobowski (1610-1675), musician and dragoman in the Ottoman Empire, who wrote a description of the Topkapi Palace for European readers in Italian.

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander's 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers' relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers' personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation's history.

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the phenomenon of travel to the places in Venice associated with the Russian poet Iosif Brodsky and the way in which the Fondamenta degli Icurabili, a place of imagination that is the title of the Russian and Italian-language translation of the essay Watermark, functions in space and consciousness of travellers. The article focuses primarily on individual literary journeys that were reflected in or even inspired the traveller’s writing activities. The experiences of being in the Fondamenta degli Incurabili and trying to understand the meaning of the toponym were described by many authors of contemporary non-fiction texts about Venice: Yuri Lepski, Yelena Yakovich, Gleb Smirnov, Arkady Ippolitov, Ekaterina Margolis. Two texts are particularly noteworthy, i.e. the reportage by Yuri Lepski Brodskiy tol’ko chto ushël (2020), which is entirely devoted to the experiences related to the journey in the footsteps of the poet and Progulki s Brodskim i tak daleye. Iosif Brodskiy v fil’me Alekseya Shishova i Yeleny Yakovich (2016) by Yelena Yakovich, where Brodsky himself interprets the title of his essay. Methodological tools deriving from the field of geopoetics and cultural geography, such as the place of imagination or reading journeys, proved helpful during the development of the paper.

Walter Bonatti was one of the leading alpinists in the post-war world. He was also the creator of the peculiar ideology of alpinism, clear in the moral purity of its assumptions, as well as an author of many books on mountains and travels. He was not only a high-mountain guide and a ski instructor, but also acclaimed travel journalist and a photographer, for which he is least known in Poland. This article is an attempt at characterising Walter Bonatti’s multifaceted literary, reportorial, and photographic creative outputs. The Italian alpinist is the author of twenty autobiography books on mountains and travels, including several photographic albums. There is an abundance of his reportorial writing connected with his nearly fifteen years long collaboration with “Epoca”, an Italian travel periodical, and of his photographic works, for which he was awarded numerous foreign honours. For the aforementioned magazine he also occasionally wrote — during his alpinist career — texts concerning his highest ascents.

Travel writing is a literary space particularly promoting moments of cross-cultural contact. In 18th century, Enlightenment new ideas encourage the production of odeporics in Italian literature, while writers and readersʼ interest for this genre increases conspicuously. The article mainly focuses on two travel books suggesting some remarkable research cues, Viaggio in Dalmazia by Alberto Fortis and Viaggio in Grecia by Saverio Scrofani, considering the travellersʼ specific approach and depiction of local people and analyzing their capability to turn these experiences into occasions to get closer to the Others and to represent them.

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) in 1620 traveled to Venice as a secretary of ambassador Van Aerssen: he was the only member of the legation who knew Italian. This visit to the Most Serene Republic has been extremely important to him, since he could experience the many natural and artistic wonders he had a mere abstract knowledge of. However, in his life the Dutch poet made a more interesting journey: an intellectual and sentimental one, writing his Pathodia sacra et profana. In this collection we have compositions written in Italian in the very fashionable style of Petrarch. In my essay, I will try to make an historic-philological analysis of this opus in order to establish how the original paradigm has been respected or violated, both in style as well as content.

THE « WORKING LIBRARY » OF ROGER JOSEPH BOSCOVICH. THE SOURCES OF THE JOURNAL OF TRAVEL FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO POLAND (1772) This essay analyses the sources of the Journal of a Voyage of Costantinople in Poland (1772) of Roger Boscovich. In this essay, I study the context of writing, and so I propose the hypothesis of rewriting the story travels from the study of the geographical and historical literature of his time about the vassal and tributary States of the Ottoman Empire. Key words: cultural transfers, French studies, Italian studies, travel literature, Balkans, Eighteenth century, Enlightenment.

The subjects of the two texts analysed in this article are two highly significant recent historical events: the death of Lady Diana in a car crash after being chased by paparazzi on 31 August 1997 and the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001, which are addressed by the Italian writer Beppe Sebaste and the French writer Frédéric Beigbeder, respectively. An analysis of each text shows that they not only examine the events in question through reportage, but they are also strongly personal and subjective. Both texts also put forward literary writers to help ‘read’ extensively mediated events, provoking reflection on how news travels and is mediated in increasingly immediate ways in today’s world, while also harking back to New Journalism. They could be called ‘unidentified narrative objects’, a label I borrow from the Italian writer Roberto Bui, alias Wu Ming 1, who has applied it to a corpus of recent Italian texts (including that of Sebaste), that combine modes of writing – such as journalism, history, detective fiction and life-writing – often blurring the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, in order to more effectively draw their readers’ attention to the national and global issues they address. Here, I extend the term unidentified narrative objects beyond Italy’s borders to the work of Beigbeder and others, suggesting that such hybridity is connected to how we process the world around us today and a new iteration of literary journalism.

f on a winter's night a traveler is considered one of the greatest novels by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Published in 1979, this literary work, which belongs to the postmodernist narrative style in the form of a frame story, tells about a reader trying to read a book with the same title from beginning to end. Much of the story’s content was written in the second-person’s narration, implying that “you” (the Reader) are the protagonist of the novel. Embedded inside are ten short stories (the loose ends of different novels) read by the main character, which causes the book to constantly switch between settings, narrators, and styles. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is truly a perfect illustration for the literary style characterized by metafiction and postmodernism. The novel is a conscious textual play with various techniques employed such as authorial role limitation, reader involvement in the plot line, open structure, non-linearity, fragmentation, multiplicity, and intertextuality. By effectively using these devices, Calvino deconstructs the traditional novel form and creates a new structure which shows a parallel between the processes of writing and reading a text. Calvino acts as the supreme game-master taking control of both the characters and the real players, who have been pushed into this game-like novel. This article focuses on analyzing the charactericstics of metafiction, the Droste effect and deconstruction in Calvino’s novel If on a winter's night a traveler, thereby helping to grasp his playful language and his narrative techniques as well as to discover his metafictional discourse.

AbstractIn 1941, the well-known international Cold War actor Serafino Romualdi traveled to South America for the first time. As a representative of the New York-based Mazzini Society, Romualdi sought to grow a robust anti-fascist movement among South America's Italian communities, finding the most success in Uruguay. As Romualdi conducted his tour of South America, he began writing a series of reports on local fascist activities, which caught the attention of officials at the Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), a US government agency under the direction of Nelson Rockefeller. The OCIAA would eventually tap Romualdi and his growing connections in South America to gather intelligence concerning Italian and German influence in the region. This investigation sheds light on the critical function that Romualdi and his associates played in helping the US government to construct the initial scaffolding necessary to orchestrate various strategies under the umbrella of OCIAA-sponsored cultural diplomacy. Despite his limited success with Italian anti-fascist groups in Latin America, Romualdi's experience in the region during the early 1940s primed him to become an effective agent for the US government with a shrewd understanding of the value in shaping local labor movements during the Cold War.

Ugo Monneret de Villard was the main Italian scholar of Islamic art in the twentieth century. Where and why did this engineer from Milan start cultivating this interest? How did his work come to be appreciated at the highest academic levels? This article delineates Monneret’s long training through an examination of his readings and writings, travels, and exchanges with other scholars, all of which influenced his working methodology, leading him to archaeological missions in Africa and predisposing his discovery of Islamic art. A fundamental focus is given to the idea of studying Islamic art objects and monuments in Italy. Unpublished archival sources reveal that in the mid-1930s Monneret was the essential point of reference of a group of intellectuals, distant from the academic Scienza ufficiale, whose intention was to promote the study of Islamic art in Italy. These intellectuals had the double goal of instituting a chair of Islamic art and of preserving the Islamic artistic heritage of southern Italy. Newly discovered documents reveal the early civic engagement and nature of a project that manifested itself years later in Monneret’s catalogue “Opere di arte islamica in Italia,” unfortunately still unpublished. The missed opportunity of creating an academic post demonstrates the scant attention given to the discipline by Italian public institutions. On the other hand, Monneret’s original interest in the Cappella Palatina ceilings is seen to be part of his broader project. A fresh look at already known sources allows us to reconstruct the editorial phases of Monneret’s masterpiece and discloses the fundamental role played by American institutions and scholars. Monneret de Villard’s multifaceted scientific profile is the “lens” through which it is possible to examine the history of Islamic art studies in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century.

Abstract: This essay represents the first scholarly assessment of the complete works of the Elizabethan poet and translator Richard Linche (fl. 1596–1601). Linche was interested in classical mythology, sonnet writing, and prose translation. He was also concerned with the burning literary questions of the 1590s and early seventeenth century. This article analyzes Linche’s sonnet sequence Diella (1596) and his love poem The Love of Dom Diego and Gynevra (1596), highlighting Linche’s use of ancient mythology as an ideal vehicle for exploring personal passion in contemporary poetry. It then turns to Linche’s English translation of the Italian mythographer Vincenzo Cartari, The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction (1599) , to illustrate how Linche deals with mythology as an inspiration for literature. Linche identifies myth as an appealing source for contemporary writing while displaying discomfort with some of its sexual content. Finally, this article discusses Linche’s An Historical Treatise of the Travels of Noah into Europe (1601), placing the work in the larger picture of his literary career and suggesting that it was a euhemeristic response to his earlier explorations of myth. In contrast to Linche’s earlier works, The Travels offers a de-personalized and desexualized approach to myth. By providing the first detailed critical assessment of Richard Linche’s oeuvre, this essay reveals an Elizabethan writer who was interested in what inspires fiction, particularly in the complicated moral issues surrounding the sensuality of classical mythology and the role of eroticism in contemporary poetry.

As many Italians, I grew up in a house where my mother cooked every day. When we get together, we eat food. So there was already that, but that's part of everybody’s experience around the Mediterranean. I think in Turkey it may be basically the same. Later, when I was working as a journalist in international affairs, I traveled around the world, mostly Asia. And while I was traveling, I was eating, of course, and exploring new places. I started being surprised by the variety of food and the different traditions; I got interested in food as a way to also understand the way people lived. When I was doing this work in international affairs, I started collaborating with a food and wine magazine in Italy called Gambero Rosso. At first, they asked me to write little reviews of ethnic restaurants in Italy, because I had lived in China and Japan, traveled anywhere from Turkey and Syria, to the Philippines. And so I started writing these little texts, professionally. Later, the publisher Stefano Bonilli (who sadly passed away a few years ago) asked me to write longer feature pieces and he sent me to Spain, France, and England. The fact that I spoke different languages helped, of course.

David Herbert Lawrence is famous for telling us to trust the tale, not the artist. When we read the notoriously varied and vital Lawrence, there are many places where he seems to over reach, if not to outright contradict himself. This essay focuses on much of the complexity and ambiguity of Lawrence’s thought and its constantly evolving and even self-contradictory nature. Lawrence understands civilization with his utmost creativity and originality – finding the sun and relating it to the sexual vitality of the man – develops over the various travels. And in this essay, I focus on how this creative development is reflected in the travel writings. The more he travels, the more he discovers the subjugation of the self and the subsequent mechanization of it. The creative struggle to overcome this impotence informs Lawrence’s travel literature. His four travel books, namely Twilight in Italy (originally published in 1916), Sea and Sardinia (originally published in 1921), Mornings in Mexico (originally published 1927), and Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays (originally published 1932) are reflective of different stages in Lawrence’s journey to understand how human beings relate to the world they are integrally part of. Lawrence uses his travel to transcend his own nationality too. Lawrence goes on to assert that he belongs to no country. Surely this relates ironically to his belief in the “spirit of place”. The essay deeply focuses on his continued movement from place to place with deep consideration of this complex belief.

The main part of this study is preceded by information on the subject of dynamically increasing, since the beginning of the 18th century, participation of Polish women from wealthy houses in social life. It can be confirmed by, among others, their travels abroad to e.g. Italy with its rich resources in the form of works of art including those preserved from ancient times being of great interest then. In the main stream of investigation the author focuses on the preserved French travel journal (“Mes voyages”) of the journey that Waleria from the Stroynowskis Tarnowska undertook to Italy in years 1803–1804 with her husband Jan Feliks and her father Walerian. The analytical and interpretational considerations refer to the fragments concerning the buildings observed by the countess during her Italian journey, which were to a various degree damaged by the power of time or human activity and that was indicated by singled out synonymous terms used for ruins. The crucial aspect of this reflection is concretisation of Tarnowska’s impressions depicted in descriptions from close contact with antique and modern edifices, not too rarely preserved in a remnant form. According to the author of this study references to and descriptions of ruins in the analysed journal are the expression of not a genuine passion but rather of the influence of contemporary fashion for ancient times and great curiosity for the world during the first journey abroad and the will to see and then record in writing all that was required to see during this Italian trip. They also prove psychologically conditioned perception of wors of art.

Ah, quando fia ch'io possa in Italia tornar? Ha ormai tre mesi, che in questi rei paese Già fatto schiavo, e dal mio ben lontano …Alas, when might I return to my Italy?For three months now I have been enslaved in this evil land, so distant from my homeGioacchino Rossini, L'Italiana in AlgeriNineteenth-century travel accounts contributed to the existing body of knowledge about the world at the time they were written, and today they serve as witness to the merging of expansionist progress with the scientific state. The primary function of these accounts was to circumscribe the world of rationality. Their authors were enlightened nomads whose duty was to incorporate new and astonishing facts as objects of knowledge into their writing, which created a mise en scène of mysterious plots; this process was in fact the first globalisation. Romanticism organised this narrative into a powerful textual montage on alterity, which combined scientific discourse, aesthetic response, and humanistic concern. Such a multifaceted set of characteristics posed serious challenges for the traveller-writer of that era, and Latin Americans had their own grand tour.

This article analyzes the figure of Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey: traveler, orientalist scholar and daguerreotypist of the 19th century. His contribution to the History of Photography is fundamental since he was a pioneer in the use of the daguerreotype from 1842 on his trip to the East, traveling through the current countries of Italy, Malta, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon. In addition, he was a great artist –watercolorist, draftsman–, he was interested in botany and gardening and stood out for his studies on Islamic architecture and archeology in the Middle East and in Andalusia, a region, the latter, which he visited in 1832. This research uses primary sources –his writings, writings of the time and his daguerreotypes– to build a biographical account in which the first moments of photography are interrelated –released in 1839, just three years before Girault de Prangey’s departure to the Near East– with the interest in Orientalism that existed in Europe in the 19th century. El presente artículo analiza la figura de Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey: viajero, erudito orientalista y daguerrotipista del siglo XIX. Su aportación a la historia de la fotografía es fundamental ya que fue un pionero en el uso del daguerrotipo a partir de 1842 en su viaje a Oriente, viajando por los actuales países de Italia, Malta, Grecia, Egipto, Turquía, Siria, Palestina, Israel y Líbano. Además, fue un gran artista –acuarelista, dibujante–, se interesó por la botánica y la jardinería y destacó por sus estudios acerca de la arquitectura islámica y la arqueología en Oriente Próximo y en Andalucía, región, esta última, que visitó en 1832. La presente investigación utiliza fuentes primarias –escritos suyos, escritos de la época y sus daguerrotipos– para construir un relato biográfico en el que se interrelacionan los primeros momentos de la fotografía –dada a conocer en 1839, apenas tres años antes de la partida de Girault de Prangey a Oriente Próximo– con el interés por el orientalismo que existía en la Europa del siglo XIX.

Purpose. The aim of the article is to create a biographic and a philosophical interpretation of the wandering life of Francesco Petrarca, one of the greatest poets, writers and thinkers of the Italian trecento, who was nicknamed “the first modern tourist” and “the first modern mountaineer”. To justify the validity of these epithets, Petrarch’s numerous journeys around Europe and their various motifs and forms, which anticipate the attitudes of modern tourists, are recalled and analysed interpretively. Petrarch’s busy life developed on two planes, which are called “internal landscape” and “external landscape” in the article. The consequence of this interpretive approach is a view of Petrarch as a “spiritual nomad” and the progenitor of modern tourism.Method. The article is doxographic in nature, using desk research methods, interpretative method of understanding (Germ. Verstehen), focused on the study of existential meanings and values, as well as critical and literary analysis.Findings. Petrarch, both in his “spiritual” (internal) wanderings and real (external) journeys, as well as in their authorial, mainly epistolary, interpretation, revealed his deeply conflicted nature. He is presented here as homoduplex, in accordance with analyses of “split self” proposed by American philosopher and psychologist William James. As a Franciscan Tertian, a man of faith, the poet felt he was the heir of Christianitas, the Christian tradition, whose main representative for him was Saint Augustine. It was in the writings of this Father of the Church that Petrarch found spiritual and religious dilemmas similar to his own. At the same time, the poet felt like a proud successor of ancient Latin culture. Philosophy and ancient literature not only provided him with lasting solace, but also marked secular, humanistic paths of development in the spirit of complete formation of the soul (Gr. paideia and psychagogy) and Ciceronian meliorism (the pursuit of personal excellence). In Petrarch’s experiences and writing activity, spiritual man was united with earthly man, Christianitas was integrated with humanitas, and Petrarch himself, standing at the crossroads of two eras, can be considered a proto-Renaissance thinker. The “duality” of Petrarch’s personality was evident in his numerous travels. His Christian sensibility made him a “spiritual nomad”, while his comprehensive humanistic passion for exploring the world entitles one to treat Petrarch (as many of the scholars cited in the article do) as the “first modern tourist”. The latter term is, of course, not historical (for Petrarch was a “modern tourist” before the actual emergence of modernity and tourism itself), but purely eidetic, i.e. highlighting certain essential determinants that characterise the modern tourist in genere. These characteristics include cognitive intentionality, travelling for pleasure, relaxation, using local guides for better orientation in the area and access to direct knowledge of attractions, customs and the lifestyles of locals. Therefore, these are issues of both motivation and travel organisation. Added to this is the motif of athletic challenge, important in the case of climbing Mont Ventoux, as well as contemplation of the landscape. Also, modern is the new style of reporting on the trip, full of subjective and personal confessions that predate romanticised descriptions of the journey.Research and conclusions limitations. There are extremely rich literature items on so-called “petrarchism”, however, it was impossible to refer to the entirety of academic and literary research in the article. It was limited to selected Polish and foreign literature, which did not in any way disturb the image or understanding of the topic, and allowed for a more synthetic approach.Practical implications. The article supplements the critical literary analysis of Petrarch’s works with travel and tourism themes, and can be used by researchers and travel historians for further humanistic studies in the field of tourism science.Originality. In the work, analysis is concentrated on the theme of travel and wandering in Petrarch’s extremely active and creative life, creating an itinerant biography of one of Europe’s greatest writers.Type of paper. Monographic article.

Introduction. Given article considers R. Schumann’s “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” / “Two Venetian Songs” (ор. 25, №17–18) on poems by T. Moore, in F. Freiligrath translation. Often the creation of the Venice ambience in art works was due to trips and impressions on this city. In 1829, R. Schumann, as a student of Heidelberg University, went on a trip to Switzerland and Italy during his study vacation. One of the cities on the travel map was Venice. R. Schumann “resurrected” the city ambience only eleven years after in the “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” (“Two Venetian Songs”), which became part of the song cycle “Myrthen” (1840). How do these two vocal miniatures, that are one of the first in the composer’s vocal creativity, reflect the individual style of his writing? Do they correlate with the nature of the “true” Schumann, who is known for his famous works, such as the cycle “A poet’s Love”? Objective. The purpose of the article is to comprehend composer methods of Venice image embodiment in “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” in the context of creative tradition of the Austro-German romantic song. Methods used in the research: 1) historical method, allowing to comprehend the selected material in the perspective of the development of Austro-German song of the 19th century; 2) intonational method, which involves the study of vocal melody in terms of melodic reactions to figurative content; 3) genre method, caused by the features of chamber vocal lyrics; 4) stylistic method, corresponding to a specific opus consideration in the general context of the composer’s creative work. The results of the study. “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” were grown up in the artistic climate of its era. The popularity of traveling in the circles of well-educated youth was a practical realization of spiritual impulses and the inner need to push the boundaries of the information space for awareness of the nature of self-own identity through a meeting with a different culture and worldview. Italy, and the entire Mediterranean areal, as the cradle of the Christian humanist culture, was a center of attraction for the German romantics. The creation of the artistic and aesthetic archetype of Italy and Venice by J. W. Goethe in “Italian Travels” and “Epigrams” has created a tradition of perception these themes not only in German literature, but also in music. R. Schumann was one of the first to respond to this creative idea. He was also the first among German composers to turn to the “poetic” Venice of the Englishman Thomas Moore and initiated the appearance of a series “Venetianische Lieder” in Austro-German music of the 19th century. A number of authors were involved in the creation of this series – F. Mendelssohn Bartholdi, A. Fesca, С. Dekker, and others. The melancholic mood of the many “Venetianisches Gondellied” written by German composers was the result of the process of mythologizing the image of Venice. The creative people (poets, writers, composers, painters) were involved in this process. They perceived this city through the prism of artistic relations, associations, and sought in its canonical symbols (channels, gondolas, sea, mirror, mask) new semantic dimensions, means of the expression of self-reflection. “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” from the song cycle “Myrthen” by R. Schumann stand apart on this list as not only the first, but also as the works distinguished by its originality. 1840 year is considered as the “song year” in the composer’s work. In this year 138 songs and the best of song cycles were written by the composer: “Liederkreis” ор. 24, “Myrthen” ор. 25, “Liederkreis” ор. 39, “Frauenliebe und Leben” ор. 42, “Dichterliebe”, ор. 48. After the “piano decade” (1829–1839) Schumann’s appeal to the song came a surprise, in particular, for the author himself. This led to the change in his musical aesthetics, to the revision of the hierarchy entrenched in the consciousness, about the primacy of music over other arts and the instrumental music over the vocal. Although the cycle “Myrten” op. 25 (1840) is one of the first in the vocal works by R. Schumann, it is distinguished by the maturity of style writing. R. Schuman’s psychological sensitivity to the poetic word is conveyed in the intonational nature of the songs, careful selection of harmonic means, finely tuned tonal plans that can emphasize both, contemplation and rebelliousness. Musical and poetic integrity is also ensured by the increased importance of the accompaniment and the piano part in whole that include the expressive instrumental introductions and postludes aimed at revealing of an image. Conclusion. The study of R.Schumann’s “variations” on Thomas Moore’s “Venice” as a separate scientific topic makes it possible to realize the scale of the creative competition established by the outstanding composer in his “Zwei Venetianische Lieder” from the vocal cycle “Myrthen”.

Fifteenth-century Italian travel narratives on India by Nicolò dei Conti and Gerolamo di Santo Stefano present a detailed account of the India they visited, following the narrative tradition of the Italian Marco Polo. These narratives of the Renaissance were published as descriptive authorial texts of travellers to the East. Their importance was due to the authors’ detailed first-hand experiences of the societies and cultures that they encountered, as well as the various trade centres of the period. These narratives were utilised by merchants, explorers, and Jesuits for a variety of purposes. The narratives of Nicolò dei Conti and Gerolamo di Santo Stefano thus became indispensable tools that were later distorted through numerous translations to suit the politics of Orientalism for the emerging colonial enterprises. In my paper, I have attempted a re-reading of the particular texts to identify how Italy saw India, while illustrating through their history of publication the transformation that these narratives underwent later in order to objectify India in the West through the lens of Orientalism in their manner of representation.

This article tries to understand the travels of Ippolito Desideri to Tibet in the context of the recent work by Alison Gopnik. The central claim of Alison Gopnik is that the western philosopher David Hume’s works were significantly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. Gopnik focuses on one aspect: the absence of a creator in Tibetan Buddhism that the Italian friar and traveller to Tibet, Ippolito Desideri, writes about, which she says was picked up by David Hume. Gopnik’s claim is based on the possibility that Desideri’s work was part of a Jesuit library in La Fleche, France. Hume frequented this library, which was part of a Jesuit knowledge network. In this article, some aspects of Desideri’s travels are analysed in the broader context of knowledge transfer from Tibet to Europe. Beginning with a description of the isolated context of Tibet and the larger context of knowledge flows that show some examples of ideas travelling from Asia and Africa to the West, the article then proceeds to examine selected aspects of the travels of Desideri. In his travels, we see that not only has Desideri acquired an intimate knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism but also documented in detail many minute aspects of Tibetan life. Further, his treatment of the religious practices of the Tibetans and their denial of a Creator is sufficient proof of the Tibetan source of this idea. This material has the potential to provide an elaborate base for a paradigm shift in the western world’s understanding of David Hume’s contribution. As Desideri travelled through different regions of the Indian subcontinent, his writings on Tibet remain uninfluenced by these biases. The article concludes by saying that there is a strong possibility that Tibetan ideas could have reached the West through Ippolito Desideri’s works.

The article underlines the negative apprehension that Emile Zola feels towards the city of Rome, influenced as it is by the anthropological vision of two writer-travellers: Stendhal and Taine. Although it was a source of admiration during the Romantic era, Zolian writing was influenced by the image of the Italian capital as a place of murderous violence. The motifs of the knife and poison become inseparable from Zola's representations of the Roman social world. It is no longer a question of the naturalist writer celebrating passions, but of a critical and pessimistic discourse on the future of Rome.

The present study aims at analyzing the relationship between the image of the Chinese Empire in the writings of travellers and Jesuits and the main themes (Reason of State, Utopianism, Mixed Constitution) of the Italian political thought during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. The writings of travellers and Jesuits presented a complex view of the Empire, which impacts in various ways the spread of the Chinese myth in the political treatises of the Counter-Reformation era. The complexity is evident in the description the relations provide of sovereignty and the behaviour of the emperor. From the very beginning of Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina is presented a complex image of the Chinese government: along with the absolutist delineation of the imperial power, there are conflicting images that, regarding either a distant past or current government practice, recognized other forms: a feudal style of monarchy, a sort of mixed constitution, or a form of dispotic govetrnment. Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits, as Martino Martini and Athanasius Kircher, presented the Mandarins as a slort of Kings-Philosophers of Plato’s Republic. Following the works composed by Jesuits, some authors pf Reason of State and utopist (Giovanni Botero and Ludovico Zuccolo) pointed out that the perfec tion of the Chinese political and social institutions could really preserve the Empire from corruption, an Empire that had to be considered a paradigm of a well ordered state, as another Jesuit, Daniello Bartoli, wrote in his book on China.

The present study aims at analyzing the relationship between the image of the Chinese Empire in the writings of travellers and Jesuits and the main themes (Reason of State, Utopianism, Mixed Constitution) of the Italian political thought during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. The writings of travellers and Jesuits presented a complex view of the Empire, which impacts in various ways the spread of the Chinese myth in the political treatises of the Counter-Reformation era. The complexity is evident in the description the relations provide of sovereignty and the behaviour of the emperor. From the very beginning of Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina is presented a complex image of the Chinese government: along with the absolutist delineation of the imperial power, there are conflicting images that, regarding either a distant past or current government practice, recognized other forms: a feudal style of monarchy, a sort of mixed constitution, or a form of dispotic govetrnment. Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits, as Martino Martini and Athanasius Kircher, presented the Mandarins as a slort of Kings-Philosophers of Plato’s Republic. Following the works composed by Jesuits, some authors pf Reason of State and utopist (Giovanni Botero and Ludovico Zuccolo) pointed out that the perfec tion of the Chinese political and social institutions could really preserve the Empire from corruption, an Empire that had to be considered a paradigm of a well ordered state, as another Jesuit, Daniello Bartoli, wrote in his book on China.

This study argues for the use of English travel narratives and their interlingual translations as vehicles to foster intercultural sensitivity and language awareness in the EAP classroom. Both travel writing and interlingual translation have been, in fact, successfully used in academic environments, as shown by an increasing scholarly interest over the past decades. Moreover, the relationship between travel and language can be explored, in Cronin’s words, “in the context of a nomadic theory of translation” where “the translating agent like the traveller straddles the borderline between the cultures” (Cronin, 2000, p. 2). In light of these considerations, this study performs a comparative analysis of Daphne Phelps’s British travel narrative A House in Sicily (1999) and its Italian translation Una casa in Sicilia (2001) to show how travel writing (also in translation) may be an excellent opportunity for a reappraisal of what literature may have to offer in the EAP context.

AbstractLeonardo Fibonacci (ca. 1170 - after 1240) during his boyhood went to Bejaïa, learned about the Hindu-Arabic numerals there, and continued to collect information about their use during travels to the Arabic world. He then wrote the Liber abbaci, which with half a century’s delay inspired the creation of Italian abbacus mathematics, later adopted in Catalonia, Provence, Germany etc. Hindu- Arabic numerals, and Arabic mathematics, was thus transmitted through a narrow and unique gate. This piece of conventional wisdom is well known - too well known to be true, indeed. There is no doubt, of course, that Fibonacci learned about Arabic (and Byzantine) commercial arithmetic, and that he presented it in his book. He is thus a witness (with a degree of reliability which has to be determined) of the commercial mathematics thriving in the commercially developed parts of the Mediterranean world. However, much evidence - presented both in his own book, in later Italian abbacus books and in similar writings from the Iberian and the Provençal regions - shows that the Liber abbaci did not play a central role in the later adoption. Romance abbacus culture came about in a broad process of interaction with Arabic non-scholarly traditions, at least until ca. 1350 within an open space, apparently concentrated around the Iberian region.

AbstractAs a vital part of translation studies, humour has drawn scholarly attention for decades, with classifications that range from Zabalbeascoa’s (The Translator 2(2):235–257, 1996) six types of jokes to Chiaro and Piferi’s (It’s green! It’s cool! It’s Shrek! Italian children, laughter and subtitles. In: Di Giovanni E, Elefante C, Pederzoli R (eds) Écrire Et Traduire Pour Les Enfants—writing and translating for children. Peter Lang, Brussels, 2010, p. 285) “Verbally Expressed Humour”. However, they are mainly related to printed pages, theatre, and film. Little research touches on the new media, which significantly impacts how information is produced and disseminated and how consumers react to and engage with these trendy platforms (Díaz-Cintas, Remael. Audiovisual translation: subtitling. Routledge, London and New York, 2021, p. 1). This significant gap in the video-sharing platforms on humour translation is the focus of this paper which intends to fill. This paper explores how humour is created and reconstructed in the dominant and constantly evolving new media era. Driven by the niche of an interdisciplinary study concerning humour and creative subtitles, the present research conducts a linguistic and semiotic analysis of humorous discourses and emojis in the Chinese contexts of the short video platform Little Red Book and the online teaching platform Rain Classroom. As the study implies, humour can be strengthened through diverse semiotic possibilities to provide better viewing experiences that bring about entertaining and educational outcomes.

Em 1945, a coleção Brasiliana, da Companhia Editora Nacional, publicou o livro Dois anos no Brasil, de autoria de François-Auguste Biard, pintor francês que tinha estado no paá­s quase um século antes. O texto, um relato de sua viagem pelo Rio de Janeiro, Espá­rito Santo e Pará, havia já sido publicado na França e na Itália em meados do século XIX. Pretende-se aqui, investigar a distá¢ncia entre o tempo da escrita e o tempo da publicação do texto, buscando compreender as razões que levaram ao ato editorial que o incluiu numa coleção que tinha como objetivo tornar-se uma metáfora do Brasil. Palavras-chave: Coleção Brasiliana. François-Auguste Biard. Viajantes século XIX. FRANá‡OIS-AUGUSTE BIARD”™S DOIS ANOS NO BRASIL: time lapse between writing and publication Abstract: In 1945, Companhia Editora Nacional”™s Brasiliana collection published Dois anos no Brasil, by François-Auguste Biard, a french painter that had been in Brazil almost a century earlier. This text, which describes the author”™s trip to Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Espá­rito Santo and Pará had already been published in both France and Italy by mid-19th century. We aim on this paper to investigate the lapse between the time the text was written and when it was published, seeking to understand the reasons that led to the editorial act which included it in a collection that had the objective of becoming a metaphor of Brazil. Keywords: Brasiliana Collection. François Auguste Biard. 19th century travelers. DOS Aá‘OS EN BRASIL, DE FRANá‡OIS-AUGUSTE BIARD: entre el tiempo de la escritura y la publicación.Resumen: En 1945, la colección Brasiliana, de la Companhia Editora Nacional, publicó el libro "Dois anos no Brasil", de autorá­a de François-Auguste Biard, pintor francés que habá­a vivido en Brasil aproximadamente un siglo antes. El texto, que trata de un relato sobre su viaje por Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo y Pará, habá­a sido publicado en Francia e Italia en meados del siglo XIX. En este articulo, se busca investigar el tiempo de la escritura y de la publicación del texto, comprendiendo las razones que llevaron al acto editorial que incluye en una colección que proponá­a tornarse una metáfora del Brasil. Palabras clave: Colección Brasiliana. François-Auguste Biard. Viajeros del siglo XIX.

Background: In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, leftist ideologies were promoted under the shadow of pacifism, as opposed to which Crnjanski, a right-wing writer and nationalist, was placed. Unfortunately, even after the Second World War, such position cost Crnjanski a decades-long exile, the political stigmatisation of his literary work in school curricula and in historical reviews of the then Yugoslav literatures, all the way until the writer’s return to Belgrade in 1965, when such perception slowly started to change. Even though Crnjanski, as a right-winger, nationalist and fascist, would bear this mark for quite a while, his literary works, at least those written before 1934, have since the early 1970s returned to the sphere of scientific interpretations. Purpouse: This paper adopts an interdisciplinary method to approach the work of Miloš Crnjanski from the 1930s in light of the two latest publications – Diplomatic Papers (1936–1941) and Political Articles (1919–1939). Based on the hitherto unknown historical materials and Crnjanski’s reports from the diplomatic missions in Berlin and Rome, and from his travels across Spain at the time, we will present a complex network of prejudices about a writer who was declared a right-winger. By analysing a work published in this period, Crnjanski’s Love in Tuscany, and the reports written in the capacity of a press and culture attaché in Berlin from 1935 to 1938 and in Rome from 1938 to 1941, we will present Crnjanski in the framework of a new reception that has been shifting in scientific circles and memories Embahade. Milo Lompar’s book Crnjanski – Biography of One Feeling (2018) and Gorana Raičević’s latest study Agon and Melancholy. The Life and Work of Miloš Crnjanski (2021) bring a new reception of the work and life of Crnjanski. Results: With the development of interdisciplinary studies and certain forms of awakening and strengthening of the right in Europe since the beginning of the 21st century, bolder and bolder studies, statements and interpretations of fascism have been appearing. In this vein, Umberto Eco published the essay ‘Ur-Fascism’ in English in 1995, which has been translated into the Serbian language. An important text by Enco Traverso was also translated. The study in question poses a modern understanding of the strengthening of right-wing movements in Europe at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. In this manner, the Italian literary historian Alessandra Tarquini in the study History of Fascist Culture gives a precise view of the breadth of fascism in the entire Italian society from its first appearances in the early 1920s to its collapse in 1943. In this study, fascism is interpreted as an ideology, but also as a form of culture and a way of living determined by myths, old and new. By taking into account the latest findings in historical documents and literature on fascism in Italy, this paper show the connections between literature, political ideas and basic writings of Crnjanski as a diplomat in the period between 1935 and 1941. In this text we show new reception in Serbian literature science and history after printed – Diplomatic Papers (1936–1941) and Political Articles (1919–1939) and Milo Lompar’s book Crnjanski – Biography of One Feeling (2018) and Gorana Raičević’s latest study Agon and Melancholy. The Life and Work of Miloš Crnjanski (2021). In conlusion we can see that Crnjanski has been writer and diplomatic atase for culture and information but that he is on rightets in political and any other way with fascism in Europe. Key words: Slavonic histories, literatures, cultures, diplomatic missions, rightist ideas, nationalist and fascist ideas. Aćimović, D., 2005. With Crnjanski in London. Belgrade: Filip Višnjić. (In Serbian) Avramović, Z., 2004. The defense of Crnjanski. Private edition Zoran Avramović: Belgrade. (In Serbian) Avramović. Z., 2016. Writers and Politics in Serbian Culture 1804–2014. Novi Sad: Pravoslavna Reč. (In Serbian) Crnjanski, M., 1995a. Travelogues I. Belgrade: the Serbian Literary Guild or Serbian Literary Cooperative (SKZ), Belgrade Publishing Institute (the BIGZ company), edited by N. Bertolino. Belgrade: the Miloš Crnjanski Endowment. (In Serbian) Crnjanski, M., 1995a. Travelogues II. Belgrade: the Serbian Literary Guild or Serbian Literary Cooperative (SKZ), BIGZ – Publishing Institute (the BIGZ company), edited by N. Bertolino. Belgrade: the Miloš Crnjanski Endowment. (In Serbian) Crnjanski, M., 2010. Embassies. Edited by Nada Mirkov, Belgrade: the Endowment Miloš Crnjanski, Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade. (In Serbian) Crnjanski. M., 2017. Political articles 1919–1939. Edited by Časlav Nikolić. Belgrade: the Miloš CrnjanskiEndowment, Catena Mundi. (In Serbian) Crnjanski, M., 2019. Diplomatic Reports (1936–1941). edited by Aleksandar Stojanović, Rastko Lompar, Belgrade: Miloš Crnjanski Catena Mundi. (In Serbian) Crnjanski, M., 2020. The Serbian Viewpoint. Third edition. Belgrade: Catena Mundi. (In Serbian) Jaćimović, S., 2009. Travelogue prose of Miloš Crnjanski. Belgrade: Teacher Education Faculty. (In Serbian) Lompar, M., 2018. Crnjanski – A Biography of a Feeling. Novi Sad: Pravoslavna Reč. (In Serbian) Mićić, S., 2018. From the bureaucracy to the diplomacy. History of the Yugoslav Diplomatic Service 1918–1939. Belgrade: The Institute for Recent History of Serbia (INIS). (In Serbian) Popović, R., 2004. The Letters of Love and Hate:Letters to Marko Ristić. Edited by Radovan Popović. Belgrade: Filip Višnjić. (In Serbian) Raičević, G., 2021. Agon and Melancholy. The life and work of Miloš Crnjanski. Novi Sad: Academic book. (In Serbian) Simić, B., 2019. Milan Stojadinović and Italy: Between diplomacy and propaganda. Belgrade: the Institute for Recent History of Serbia (INIS). (In Serbian) Eco, U., 2019. Ur-Fascism. Translated by Aleksandra Nedeljković. Belgrade: The Faculty of Media and Communications. (In Serbian) Tarquini, A., 2011. Storia della cultura fascista. Bologna: il Mulino. (In Italian) Giubilei, F., 2018. Storia dellla cultura di destra. Giubilei Regnani: Roma-Cesena. (In Italian)

At a time when a trip abroad was out of the reach of most women, even if they could not make the journey, Australian women could imagine “abroad” just by reading popular women’s magazines such as Woman (later Woman’s Day and Home then Woman’s Day) and The Australian Women’s Weekly, and journals, such as The Progressive Woman and The Housewife. Increasingly in the post-war period, these magazines and journals contained advertisements for holidaying abroad, recipes for international foods and articles on overseas fashions. It was not unusual for local manufacturers, to use the lure of travel and exotic places as a way of marketing their goods. Healing Bicycles, for example, used the slogan “In Venice men go to work on Gondolas: In Australia it’s a Healing” (“Healing Cycles” 40), and Exotiq cosmetics featured landscapes of countries where Exotiq products had “captured the hearts of women who treasured their loveliness: Cincinnati, Milan, New York, Paris, Geneva and Budapest” (“Exotiq Cosmetics” 36).Unlike Homer’s Penelope, who stayed at home for twenty years waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan wars, women have always been on the move to the same extent as men. Their rich travel stories (Riggal, Haysom, Lancaster)—mostly written as letters and diaries—remain largely unpublished and their experiences are not part of the public record to the same extent as the travel stories of men. Ros Pesman argues that the women traveller’s voice was one of privilege and authority full of excitement and disbelief (Pesman 26). She notes that until well into the second part of the twentieth century, “the journey for Australian women to Europe was much more than a return to the sources of family identity and history” (19). It was also:a pilgrimage to the centres and sites of culture, literature and history and an encounter with “the real world.”Europe, and particularly London,was also the place of authority and reference for all those seeking accreditation and recognition, whether as real writers, real ladies or real politicians and statesmen. (19)This article is about two Australian writers; Helen Seager, a journalist employed by The Argus, a daily newspaper in Melbourne Australia, and Gwen Hughes, a graduate of Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy in Melbourne, working in England as a lecturer, demonstrator and cookbook writer for Parkinsons’ Stove Company. Helen Seager travelled to England on an assignment for The Argus in 1950 and sent articles each day for publication in the women’s section of the newspaper. Gwen Hughes travelled extensively in the Balkans in the 1930s recording her impressions, observations, and recipes for traditional foods whilst working for Parkinsons in England. These women were neither returning to the homeland for an encounter with the real world, nor were they there as cultural tourists in the Cook’s Tour sense of the word. They were professional writers and their observations about the places they visited offer fresh and lively versions of England and Europe, its people, places, and customs.Helen SeagerAustralian Journalist Helen Seager (1901–1981) wrote a daily column, Good Morning Ma’am in the women’s pages of The Argus, from 1947 until shortly after her return from abroad in 1950. Seager wrote human interest stories, often about people of note (Golding), but with a twist; a Baroness who finds knitting exciting (Seager, “Baroness” 9) and ballet dancers backstage (Seager, “Ballet” 10). Much-loved by her mainly female readership, in May 1950 The Argus sent her to England where she would file a daily report of her travels. Whilst now we take travel for granted, Seager was sent abroad with letters of introduction from The Argus, stating that she was travelling on a special editorial assignment which included: a certificate signed by the Lord Mayor of The City of Melbourne, seeking that any courtesies be extended on her trip to England, the Continent, and America; a recommendation from the Consul General of France in Australia; and introductions from the Premier’s Department, the Premier of Victoria, and Austria’s representative in Australia. All noted the nature of her trip, her status as an esteemed reporter for a Melbourne newspaper, and requested that any courtesy possible to be made to her.This assignment was an indication that The Argus valued its women readers. Her expenses, and those of her ten-year-old daughter Harriet, who accompanied her, were covered by the newspaper. Her popularity with her readership is apparent by the enthusiastic tone of the editorial article covering her departure. Accompanied with a photograph of Seager and Harriet boarding the aeroplane, her many women readers were treated to their first ever picture of what she looked like:THOUSANDS of "Argus" readers, particularly those in the country, have wanted to know what Helen Seager looks like. Here she is, waving good-bye as she left on the first stage of a trip to England yesterday. She will be writing her bright “Good Morning, Ma'am” feature as she travels—giving her commentary on life abroad. (The Argus, “Goodbye” 1)Figure 1. Helen Seager and her daughter Harriet board their flight for EnglandThe first article “From Helen in London” read,our Helen Seager, after busy days spent exploring England with her 10-year-old daughter, Harriet, today cabled her first “Good Morning, Ma’am” column from abroad. Each day from now on she will report from London her lively impressions in an old land, which is delightfully new to her. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Whilst some of her dispatches contain the impressions of the awestruck traveller, for the most they are exquisitely observed stories of the everyday and the ordinary, often about the seemingly most trivial of things, and give a colourful, colonial and egalitarian impression of the places that she visits. A West End hair-do is described, “as I walked into that posh looking establishment, full of Louis XV, gold ornateness to be received with bows from the waist by numerous satellites, my first reaction was to turn and bolt” (Seager, “West End” 3).When she visits Oxford’s literary establishments, she is, for this particular article, the awestruck Australian:In Oxford, you go around saying, soto voce and aloud, “Oh, ye dreaming spires of Oxford.” And Matthew Arnold comes alive again as a close personal friend.In a weekend, Ma’am, I have seen more of Oxford than lots of native Oxonians. I have stood and brooded over the spit in Christ Church College’s underground kitchens on which the oxen for Henry the Eighth were roasted.I have seen the Merton Library, oldest in Oxford, in which the chains that imprisoned the books are still to be seen, and have added by shoe scrape to the stone steps worn down by 500 years of walkers. I have walked the old churches, and I have been lost in wonder at the goodly virtues of the dead. And then, those names of Oxford! Holywell, Tom’s Quad, Friars’ Entry, and Long Wall. The gargoyles at Magdalen and the stones untouched by bombs or war’s destruction. It adds a new importance to human beings to know that once, if only, they too have walked and stood and stared. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Her sense of wonder whilst in Oxford is, however, moderated by the practicalities of travel incorporated into the article. She continues to describe the warnings she was given, before her departure, of foreign travel that had her alarmed about loss and theft, and the care she took to avoid both. “It would have made you laugh, Ma’am, could you have seen the antics to protect personal property in the countries in transit” (Seager, “From Helen” 3).Her description of a trip to Blenheim Palace shows her sense of fun. She does not attempt to describe the palace or its contents, “Blenheim Palace is too vast and too like a great Government building to arouse much envy,” settling instead on a curiosity should there be a turn of events, “as I surged through its great halls with a good-tempered, jostling mob I couldn’t help wondering what those tired pale-faced guides would do if the mob mood changed and it started on an old-fashioned ransack.” Blenheim palace did not impress her as much as did the Sunday crowd at the palace:The only thing I really took a fancy to were the Venetian cradle, which was used during the infancy of the present Duke and a fine Savvonerie carpet in the same room. What I never wanted to see again was the rubbed-fur collar of the lady in front.Sunday’s crowd was typically English, Good tempered, and full of Cockney wit, and, if you choose to take your pleasures in the mass, it is as good a company as any to be in. (Seager, “We Look” 3)In a description of Dublin and the Dubliners, Seager describes the food-laden shops: “Butchers’ shops leave little room for customers with their great meat carcasses hanging from every hook. … English visitors—and Dublin is awash with them—make an orgy of the cakes that ooze real cream, the pink and juicy hams, and the sweets that demand no points” (Seager, “English” 6). She reports on the humanity of Dublin and Dubliners, “Dublin has a charm that is deep-laid. It springs from the people themselves. Their courtesy is overlaid with a real interest in humanity. They walk and talk, these Dubliners, like Kings” (ibid.).In Paris she melds the ordinary with the noteworthy:I had always imagined that the outside of the Louvre was like and big art gallery. Now that I know it as a series of palaces with courtyards and gardens beyond description in the daytime, and last night, with its cleverly lighted fountains all aplay, its flags and coloured lights, I will never forget it.Just now, down in the street below, somebody is packing the boot of a car to go for, presumably, on a few days’ jaunt. There is one suitcase, maybe with clothes, and on the footpath 47 bottles of the most beautiful wines in the world. (Seager, “When” 3)She writes with a mix of awe and ordinary:My first glimpse of that exciting vista of the Arc de Triomphe in the distance, and the little bistros that I’ve always wanted to see, and all the delights of a new city, […] My first day in Paris, Ma’am, has not taken one whit from the glory that was London. (ibid.) Figure 2: Helen Seager in ParisIt is my belief that Helen Seager intended to do something with her writings abroad. The articles have been cut from The Argus and pasted onto sheets of paper. She has kept copies of the original reports filed whist she was away. The collection shows her insightful egalitarian eye and a sharp humour, a mix of awesome and commonplace.On Bastille Day in 1950, Seager wrote about the celebrations in Paris. Her article is one of exuberant enthusiasm. She writes joyfully about sirens screaming overhead, and people in the street, and looking from windows. Her article, published on 19 July, starts:Paris Ma’am is a magical city. I will never cease to be grateful that I arrived on a day when every thing went wrong, and watched it blossom before my eyes into a gayness that makes our Melbourne Cup gala seem funeral in comparison.Today is July 14.All places of business are closed for five days and only the places of amusement await the world.Parisians are tireless in their celebrations.I went to sleep to the music of bands, dancing feet and singing voices, with the raucous but cheerful toots from motors splitting the night air onto atoms. (Seager, “When” 3)This article resonates uneasiness. How easily could those scenes of celebration on Bastille Day in 1950 be changed into the scenes of carnage on Bastille Day 2016, the cheerful toots of the motors transformed into cries of fear, the sirens in the sky from aeroplanes overhead into the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles, as a Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, as part of a terror attack drives a truck through crowds of people celebrating in Nice.Gwen HughesGwen Hughes graduated from Emily Macpherson College of Domestic Economy with a Diploma of Domestic Science, before she travelled to England to take up employment as senior lecturer and demonstrator of Parkinson’s England, a company that manufactured electric and gas stoves. Hughes wrote in her unpublished manuscript, Balkan Fever, that it was her idea of making ordinary cooking demonstration lessons dramatic and homelike that landed her the job in England (Hughes, Balkan 25-26).Her cookbook, Perfect Cooking, was produced to encourage housewives to enjoy cooking with their Parkinson’s modern cookers with the new Adjusto temperature control. The message she had to convey for Parkinsons was: “Cooking is a matter of putting the right ingredients together and cooking them at the right temperature to achieve a given result” (Hughes, Perfect 3). In reality, Hughes used this cookbook as a vehicle to share her interest in and love of Continental food, especially food from the Balkans where she travelled extensively in the 1930s.Recipes of Continental foods published in Perfect Cooking sit seamlessly alongside traditional British foods. The section on soup, for example, contains recipes for Borscht, a very good soup cooked by the peasants of Russia; Minestrone, an everyday Italian soup; Escudella, from Spain; and Cream of Spinach Soup from France (Perfect 22-23). Hughes devoted a whole chapter to recipes and descriptions of Continental foods labelled “Fascinating Foods From Far Countries,” showing her love and fascination with food and travel. She started this chapter with the observation:There is nearly as much excitement and romance, and, perhaps fear, about sampling a “foreign dish” for the “home stayer” as there is in actually being there for the more adventurous “home leaver”. Let us have a little have a little cruise safe within the comfort of our British homes. Let us try and taste the good things each country is famed for, all the while picturing the romantic setting of these dishes. (Hughes, Perfect 255)Through her recipes and descriptive passages, Hughes took housewives in England and Australia into the strange and wonderful kitchens of exotic women: Madame Darinka Jocanovic in Belgrade, Miss Anicka Zmelova in Prague, Madame Mrskosova at Benesova. These women taught her to make wonderful-sounding foods such as Apfel Strudel, Knedlikcy, Vanilla Kipfel and Christmas Stars. “Who would not enjoy the famous ‘Goose with Dumplings,’” she declares, “in the company of these gay, brave, thoughtful people with their romantic history, their gorgeously appareled peasants set in their richly picturesque scenery” (Perfect 255).It is Hughes’ unpublished manuscript Balkan Fever, written in Melbourne in 1943, to which I now turn. It is part of the Latrobe Heritage collection at the State Library of Victoria. Her manuscript was based on her extensive travels in the Balkans in the 1930s whilst she lived and worked in England, and it was, I suspect, her intention to seek publication.In her twenties, Hughes describes how she set off to the Balkans after meeting a fellow member of the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) at the Royal Yugoslav Legation. He was an expert on village life in the Balkans and advised her, that as a writer she would get more information from the local villagers than she would as a tourist. Hughes, who, before television gave cooking demonstrations on the radio, wrote, “I had been writing down recipes and putting them in books for years and of course the things one talks about over the air have to be written down first—that seemed fair enough” (Hughes, Balkan 25-26). There is nothing of the awestruck traveller in Hughes’ richly detailed observations of the people and the places that she visited. “Travelling in the Balkans is a very different affair from travelling in tourist-conscious countries where you just leave it to Cooks. You must either have unlimited time at your disposal, know the language or else have introductions that will enable the right arrangements to be made for you” (Balkan 2), she wrote. She was the experiential tourist, deeply immersed in her surroundings and recording food culture and society as it was.Hughes acknowledged that she was always drawn away from the cities to seek the real life of the people. “It’s to the country district you must go to find the real flavour of a country and the heart of its people—especially in the Balkans where such a large percentage of the population is agricultural” (Balkan 59). Her descriptions in Balkan Fever are a blend of geography, history, culture, national songs, folklore, national costumes, food, embroidery, and vivid observation of the everyday city life. She made little mention of stately homes or buildings. Her attitude to travel can be summed up in her own words:there are so many things to see and learn in the countries of the old world that, walking with eyes and mind wide open can be an immensely delightful pastime, even with no companion and nowhere to go. An hour or two spent in some unpretentious coffee house can be worth all the dinners at Quaglino’s or at The Ritz, if your companion is a good talker, a specialist in your subject, or knows something of the politics and the inner life of the country you are in. (Balkan 28)Rather than touring the grand cities, she was seduced by the market places with their abundance of food, colour, and action. Describing Sarajevo she wrote:On market day the main square is a blaze of colour and movement, the buyers no less colourful than the peasants who have come in from the farms around with their produce—cream cheese, eggs, chickens, fruit and vegetables. Handmade carpets hung up for sale against walls or from trees add their barbaric colour to the splendor of the scene. (Balkan 75)Markets she visited come to life through her vivid descriptions:Oh those markets, with the gorgeous colours, and heaped untidiness of the fruits and vegetables—paprika, those red and green peppers! Every kind of melon, grape and tomato contributing to the riot of colour. Then there were the fascinating peasant embroideries, laces and rich parts of old costumes brought in from the villages for sale. The lovely gay old embroideries were just laid out on a narrow carpet spread along the pavement or hung from a tree if one happened to be there. (Balkan 11)Perhaps it was her radio cooking shows that gave her the ability to make her descriptions sensorial and pictorial:We tasted luxurious foods, fish, chickens, fruits, wines, and liqueurs. All products of the country. Perfect ambrosial nectar of the gods. I was entirely seduced by the rose petal syrup, fragrant and aromatic, a red drink made from the petals of the darkest red roses. (Balkan 151)Ordinary places and everyday events are beautifully realised:We visited the cheese factory amongst other things. … It was curious to see in that far away spot such a quantity of neatly arranged cheeses in the curing chamber, being prepared for export, and in another room the primitive looking round balls of creamed cheese suspended from rafters. Later we saw trains of pack horses going over the mountains, and these were probably the bearers of these cheeses to Bitolj or Skoplje, whence they would be consigned further for export. (Balkan 182)ConclusionReading Seager and Hughes, one cannot help but be swept along on their travels and take part in their journeys. What is clear, is that they were inspired by their work, which is reflected in the way they wrote about the places they visited. Both sought out people and places that were, as Hughes so vividly puts it, not part of the Cook’s Tour. They travelled with their eyes wide open for experiences that were both new and normal, making their writing relevant even today. Written in Paris on Bastille Day 1950, Seager’s Bastille Day article is poignant when compared to Bastille Day in France in 2016. Hughes’s descriptions of Sarajevo are a far cry from the scenes of destruction in that city between 1992 and 1995. The travel writing of these two women offers us vivid impressions and images of the often unreported events, places, daily lives, and industry of the ordinary and the then every day, and remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.Pesman writes, “women have always been on the move and Australian women have been as numerous as passengers on the outbound ships as have men” (20), but the records of their travels seldom appear on the public record. Whilst their work-related writings are part of the public record (see Haysom; Lancaster; Riggal), this body of women’s travel writing has not received the attention it deserves. Hughes’ cookbooks, with their traditional Eastern European recipes and evocative descriptions of people and kitchens, are only there for the researcher who knows that cookbooks are a trove of valuable social and cultural material. Digital copies of Seager’s writing can be accessed on Trove (a digital repository), but there is little else about her or her body of writing on the public record.ReferencesThe Argus. “Goodbye Ma’am.” 26 May 1950: 1. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22831285?searchTerm=Goodbye%20Ma%E2%80%99am%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.“Exotiq Cosmetics.” Advertisement. Woman 20 Aug. 1945: 36.Golding, Peter. “Just a Chattel of the Sale: A Mostly Light-Hearted Retrospective of a Diverse Life.” In Jim Usher, ed., The Argus: Life & Death of Newspaper. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2007.Haysom, Ida. Diaries and Photographs of Ida Haysom. <http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1637361>.“Healing Cycles.” Advertisement. Woman 27 Aug. 1945: 40. Hughes, Gwen. Balkan Fever. Unpublished Manuscript. State Library of Victoria, MS 12985 Box 3846/4. 1943.———. Perfect Cooking London: Parkinsons, c1940.Lancaster, Rosemary. Je Suis Australienne: Remarkable Women in France 1880-1945. Crawley WA: UWA Press, 2008.Pesman, Ros. “Overseas Travel of Australian Women: Sources in the Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library of Victoria.” The Latrobe Journal 58 (Spring 1996): 19-26.Riggal, Louie. (Louise Blanche.) Diary of Italian Tour 1905 February 21 - May 1. <http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1635602>.Seager, Helen. “Ballet Dancers Backstage.” The Argus 10 Aug. 1944: 10. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11356057?searchTerm=Ballet%20Dancers%20Backstage&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194>.———. “The Baroness Who Finds Knitting Exciting.” The Argus 1 Aug. 1944: 9. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11354557?searchTerm=Helen%20seager%20Baroness&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194>.———. “English Visitors Have a Food Spree in Eire.” The Argus 29 Sep. 1950: 6. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22912011?searchTerm=English%20visitors%20have%20a%20spree%20in%20Eire&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “From Helen in London.” The Argus 20 June 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22836738?searchTerm=From%20Helen%20in%20London&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “Helen Seager Storms Paris—Paris Falls.” The Argus 15 July 1950: 7.<http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906913?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Storms%20Paris%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “We Look over Blenheim Palace.” The Argus 28 Sep. 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22902040?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Its%20as%20a%20good%20a%20place%20as%20you%20would%20want%20to%20be&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “West End Hair-Do Was Fun.” The Argus 3 July 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22913940?searchTerm=West%20End%20hair-do%20was%20fun%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “When You Are in Paris on July 14.” The Argus 19 July 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906244?searchTerm=When%20you%20are%20in%20Paris%20on%20July%2014&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.

Through my last lengthy writing project, it did not take long to I realise I had become obsessed with paths. The proof of it was there in my notebooks, and, most prominently, in the backlog of photographs cluttering the inner workings of my mobile phone. Most of the photographs I took had a couple of things in common: first, the astonishing greenness of the world they were describing; second, the way a road or path or corridor or pavement or trail led off into distance. The greenness was because I was in England, in summer, and mostly in a part of the country where green seems at times the only colour. I am not sure what it was about tailing perspective that caught me.Image 1: a) Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford; b) Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradfordc) Leeds Road, Otley; d) Shibden Park, Halifax Image 2: a) Runswick Bay; b) St. Mary's Churchyard, Habberleyc) The Habberley Road, to Pontesbury; d) Todmorden, path to Stoodley Pike I was working on a kind of family memoir, tied up in my grandmother’s last days, which were also days I spent marching through towns and countryside I once knew, looking for clues about a place and its past. I had left the north-west of England a decade or so before, and I was grappling with what James Wood calls “homelooseness”, a sensation of exile that even economic migrants like myself encounter. It is a particular kind of “secular homelessness” in which “the ties that might bind one to Home have been loosened” (105-106). Loosened irrevocably, I might add. The kind of wandering which I embarked on is not unique. Wood describes it in himself, and in the work of W.G. Sebald—a writer who, he says, “had an exquisite sense of the varieties of not-belonging” (106).I walked a lot, mostly on paths I used to know. And when, later, I counted up the photographs I had taken of that similar-but-different scene, there were almost 500 of them, none of which I can bring myself to delete. Some were repeated, or nearly so—I had often tried to make sure the path in the frame was centred in the middle of the screen. Most of the pictures were almost entirely miscellaneous, and if it were not for a feature on my phone I could not work out how to turn off (that feature which tracks where each photograph was taken) I would not have much idea of what each picture represented. What’s clear is that there was some lingering significance, some almost-tangible metaphor, in the way I was recording the walking I was doing. This same significance is there, too (in an almost quantifiable way), in the thesis I was working on while I was taking the photographs: I used the word “path” 63 times in the version I handed to examiners, not counting all the times I could have, but chose not to—all the “pavements”, “trails”, “roads”, and “holloways” of it would add up to a number even more substantial. For instance, the word “walk”, or derivatives of it, comes up 115 times. This article is designed to ask why. I aim to focus on that metaphor, on that significance, and unpack the way life writing can intersect with both the journey of a life being lived, and the process of writing down that life (by process of writing I sometimes mean anything but: I mean the process of working towards the writing. Of going, of doing, of talking, of spending, of working, of thinking, of walking). I came, in the thesis, to view certain kinds of prose as a way of imitating the rhythms of the mind, but I think there’s something about that rhythm which associates it with the feet as well. Rebecca Solnit thinks so too, or, at least, that the processes of thinking and walking can wrap around each other, helixed or concatenated. In Wanderlust she says that:the rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. (5-6)The “odd consonance” Solnit speaks of is a kind of seamlessness between the internal and external; it is something which can be aped on the page. And, in this way, prose can imitate the mind thinking. This way of writing is evident in the digression-filled, wandering, sinuous sentences of W.G. Sebald, and of Marcel Proust as well. I don’t want to entangle myself in the question of whether Proust and Sebald count as life writers here. I used them as models, and, at the very least, I think their prose manipulates the conceits of the autobiographical pact. In fact, Sebald often refused to label his own work; once he called his writing “prose [...] of indefinite form” (Franklin 123). My definition of life writing is, thus, indefinite, and merely indicates the field in which I work and know best.Edmund White, when writing on Proust, suggested that every page of Remembrance of Things Past—while only occasionally being a literal page of Proust’s mind thinking—is, nevertheless, “a transcript of a mind thinking [...] the fully orchestrated, ceaseless, and disciplined ruminations of one mind, one voice” (138). Ceaselessness, seamlessness ... there’s also a viscosity to this kind of prose—Virginia Woolf called it “impassioned”, and spoke of the way some prosecan lick up with its long glutinous tongue the most minute fragments of fact and mass them into the most subtle labyrinths, and listen silently at doors behind which only a murmur, only a whisper, is to be heard. With all the suppleness of a tool which is in constant use it can follow the windings and record the changes which are typical of the modern mind. To this, with Proust and Dostoevsky behind us, we must agree. (20)When I read White and Woolf it seemed they could have been talking about Sebald, too: everything in Sebald’s oeuvre is funnelled through what White described in Remembrance as the cyclopean “I” at the centre of the Proustian consciousness (138). The same could be said about Sebald: as Lynne Schwartz says, “All Sebald’s characters sound like the narrator” (15). And that narrator has very particular qualities, encouraged by the sense of homelooseness Wood describes: the Sebald narrator is a wanderer, by train through Italian cities and New York Suburbs, on foot through the empty reaches of the English countryside, exploring the history of each settlement he passes through [...] Wherever he travels, he finds strangely vacant streets and roads, not a soul around [...] Sebald’s books are famously strewn with evocative, gloomy black-and-white photographs that call up the presence of the dead, of vanished places, and also serve as proofs of his passage. (Schwartz 14) I tried to resist the urge to take photographs, for the simple reason that I knew I could not include them all in the finished thesis—even including some would seem (perhaps) derivative. But this method of wandering—whether on the page or in the world—was formative for me. And the linkage between thinking and walking, and walking and writing, and writing and thinking is worth exploring, if only to identify some reason for that need to show proof of passage.Walking in Proust and Sebald either forms the shape of narrative, or one its cruxes. Both found ways to let walking affect the rhythm, movement, motivation, and even the aesthetic of their prose. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, for example, is plotless because of the way it follows its narrator on a walking tour of Suffolk. The effect is similar to something Murray Baumgarten noticed in one of Sebald’s other books, The Emigrants: “The [Sebaldian] narrator discovers in the course of his travels (and with him the reader) that he is constructing the text he is reading, a text at once being imagined and destroyed, a fragment of the past, and a ruin that haunts the present” (268). Proust’s opus is a meditation on the different ways we can walk. Remembrance is a book about momentum—a book about movement. It is a book which always forges forward, but which always faces backward, where time and place can still and footsteps be paused in motion, or tiptoed upstairs and across tables or be caught in flight over the body of an octogenarian lying on a beach. And it is the walks of the narrator’s past—his encounters with landscape—that give his present (and future) thoughts impetus: the rhythms of his long-past progress still affect the way he moves and acts and thinks, and will always do so:the “Méséglise way” and the “Guermantes way” remain for me linked with many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind [...] [T]he two “ways” give to those [impressions of the mind] a foundation, depth, a dimension lacking from the rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a significance which is for me alone. (Swann’s Way 252-255)The two “ways”—walks in and around the town of Combray—are, for the narrator, frames through which he thinks about his childhood, and all the things which happened to him because of that childhood. I felt something similar through the process of writing my thesis: a need to allow the 3-mile-per-hour-connection between mind and body and place that Solnit speaks about seep into my work. I felt the stirrings of old ways; the places I once walked, which I photographed and paced, pulsed and pushed me forwards in the present and towards the future. I felt strangely attached to, and disconnected from, those pathways: lanes where I had rummaged for conkers; streets my grandparents had once lived and worked on; railways demolished because of roads which now existed, leaving only long, straight pathways through overgrown countryside suffused with time and memory. The oddness I felt might be an effect of what Wood describes as a “certain doubleness”, “where homesickness is a kind of longing for Britain and an irritation with Britain: sickness for and sickness of” (93-94). The model of seamless prose offered some way to articulate, at least, the particularities of this condition, and of the problem of connection—whether with place or the past. But it is in this shift away from conclusiveness, which occurs when the writer constructs-as-they-write, that Baumgarten sees seamlessness:rather than the defined edges, boundaries, and conventional perceptions promised by realism, and the efficient account of intention, action, causation, and conclusion implied by the stance of realistic prose, reader and narrator have to assimilate the past and present in a dream state in which they blend imperceptibly into each other. (277)It’s difficult to articulate the way in which the connection between walking, writing, and thinking works. Solnit draws one comparison, talking to the ways in which digression and association mix:as a literary structure, the recounted walk encourages digression and association, in contrast to the stricter form of a discourse or the chronological progression of a biographical or historical narrative [...] James Joyce and Virginia Woolf would, in trying to describe the workings of the mind, develop of style called stream of consciousness. In their novels Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway, the jumble of thoughts and recollections of their protagonists unfolds best during walks. This kind of unstructured, associative thinking is the kind most often connected to walking, and it suggests walking as not an analytical but an improvisational act. (21)I think the key, here, is the notion of association—in the making of connections, and, in my case, in the making of connections between present and past. When we walk we exist in a roving state, and with a dual purpose: Sophie Cunningham says that we walk to get from one place to the next, but also to insist that “what lies between our point of departure and our destination is important. We create connection. We pay attention to detail, and these details plant us firmly in the day, in the present” (Cunningham). The slipperiness of homelooseness can be emphasised in the slipperiness of seamless prose, and walking—situating self in the present—is a rebuttal of slipperiness (if, as I will argue, a rebuttal which has at its heart a contradiction: it is both effective and ineffective. It feels as close as is possible to something impossible to attain). Solnit argues that walking and what she calls “personal, descriptive, and specific” writing are suited to each other:walking is itself a way of grounding one’s thoughts in a personal and embodied experience of the world that it lends itself to this kind of writing. This is why the meaning of walking is mostly discussed elsewhere than in philosophy: in poetry, novels, letters, diaries, travellers’ accounts, and first-person essays. (26)If a person is searching for some kind of possible-impossible grounding in the past, then walking pace is the pace at which to achieve that sensation (both in the world and on the page). It is at walking pace that connections can be made, even if they can be sensed slipping away: this is the Janus-faced problem of attempting to uncover anything which has been. The search, in fact, becomes facsimile for the past itself, or for the inconclusiveness of the past. In my own work—in preparing for that work—I walked and wrote about walking up the flank of the hill which hovered above the house in which I lived before I left England. To get to the top, and the great stone monument which sits there, I had to pass that house. The door was open, and that was enough to unsettle. Baumgarten, again on The Emigrants, articulates the effect: “unresolved, fragmented, incomplete, relying on shards for evidence, the narrator insists on the inconclusiveness of his experience: rather than arriving at a conclusion, narrator and reader are left disturbed” (269).Sebald writes in his usual intense way about a Swiss writer, Robert Walser, who he calls le promeneur solitaire (“The Solitary Walker”). Walser was a prolific writer, but through the last years of his life wrote less and less until he ended up incapable of doing so: in the end, Sebald says, “the traces Robert Walser left on his path through life were so faint as to have almost been effaced altogether” (119).Sebald draws parallels between Walser and his own grandfather. Both have worked their way into Sebald’s prose, along with the author himself. Because of this cocktail, I’ve come to read Sebald’s thoughts on Walser as sideways thoughts on his own prose (perhaps due to that cyclopean quality described by White). The works of the two writers share, at the very least, a certain incandescent ephemerality—a quality which exists in Sebald’s work, crystallised in the form and formlessness of a wasps’ nest. The wasps’ nest is a symbol Sebald uses in his book Vertigo, and which he talks to in an interview with Sarah Kafatou:do you know what a wasp’s nest is like? It’s made of something much much thinner than airmail paper: grey and as thin as possible. This gets wrapped around and around like pastry, like a millefeuille, and can get as big as two feet across. It weighs nothing. For me the wasp’s nest is a kind of ideal vision: an object that is extremely complicated and intricate, made out of something that hardly exists. (32)It is in this ephemerality that the walker’s way of moving—if not their journey—can be felt. The ephemerality is necessary because of the way the world is: the way it always passes. A work which is made to seem to encompass everything, like Remembrance of Things Past, is made to do so because that is the nature of what walking offers: an ability to comprehend the world solidly, both minutely and vastly, but with a kind of forgetting attached to it. When a person walks through the world they are firmly embedded in it, yes, but they are also always enacting a process of forgetting where they have been. This continual interplay between presence and absence is evidenced in the way in which Sebald and Proust build the consciousnesses they shape on the page—consciousnessess accustomed to connectedness. According to Sebald, it was through the prose of Walser that he learned this—or, at least, through an engagement with Walser’s world, Sebald, “slowly learned to grasp how everything is connected across space and time” (149). Perhaps it can be seen in the way that the Méséglise and Guermantes ways resonate for the Proustian narrator even when they are gone. Proust’s narrator receives a letter from an old love, in the last volume of Remembrance, which describes the fate of the Méséglise way (Swann’s way, that is—the title of the first volume in the sequence). Gilberte tells him that the battlefields of World War I have overtaken the paths they used to walk:the little road you so loved, the one we called the stiff Hawthorn climb, where you professed to be in love with me when you were a child, when all the time I was in love with you, I cannot tell you how important that position is. The great wheatfield in which it ended is the famous “slope 307,” the name you have so often seen recorded in the communiqués. The French blew up the little bridge over the Vivonne which, you remember, did not bring back your childhood to you as much as you would have liked. The Germans threw others across; during a year and a half they held one half of Combray and the French the other. (Time Regained 69-70)Lia Purpura describes, and senses, a similar kind of connectedness. The way in which each moment builds into something—into the ephemeral, shifting self of a person walking through the world—is emphasised because that is the way the world works:I could walk for miles right now, fielding all that passes through, rubs off, lends a sense of being—that rush of moments, objects, sensations so much like a cloud of gnats, a cold patch in the ocean, dust motes in a ray of sun that roil, gather, settle around my head and make up the daily weather of a self. (x)This is what seamless prose can emulate: the rush of moments and the folds and shapes which dust turns and makes. And, well, I am aware that this may seem a grand kind of conclusion, and even a peculiarly nonspecific one. But nonspecificity is built by a culmination of details, of sentences—it is built deliberately, to evoke a sense of looseness in the world. And in the associations which result, through the mind of the writer, their narrator, and the reader, much more than is evident on the page—Sebald’s “everything”—is flung to the surface. Of course, this “everything” is split through with the melancholy evident in the destruction of the Méséglise way. Nonspecificity becomes the result of any attempt to capture the past—or, at least, the past becomes less tangible the longer, closer, and slower your attempt to grasp it. In both Sebald and Proust the task of representation is made to feel seamless in echo of the impossibility of resolution.In the unbroken track of a sentence lies a metaphor for the way in which life is spent: under threat, forever assaulted by the world and the senses, and forever separated from what came before. The walk-as-method is entangled with the mind thinking and the pen writing; each apes the other, and all work towards the same kind of end: an articulation of how the world is. At least, in the hands of Sebald and Proust and through their long and complex prosodies, it does. For both there is a kind of melancholy attached to this articulation—perhaps because the threads that bind sever as well. The Rings of Saturn offers a look at this. The book closes with a chapter on the weaving of silk, inflected, perhaps, with a knowledge of the ways in which Robert Walser—through attempts to ensnare some of life’s ephemerality—became a victim of it:That weavers in particular, together with scholars and writers with whom they had much in common, tended to suffer from melancholy and all the evils associated with it, is understandable given the nature of their work, which forced them to sit bent over, day after day, straining to keep their eye on the complex patterns they created. It is difficult to imagine the depths of despair into which those can be driven who, even after the end of the working day, are engrossed in their intricate designs and who are pursued, into their dreams, by the feeling that they have got hold of the wrong thread. (283)Vladimir Nabokov, writing on Swann’s Way, gives a competing metaphor for thinking through the seamlessness afforded by walking and writing. It is, altogether, more optimistic: more in keeping with Purpura’s interpretation of connectedness: “Proust’s conversations and his descriptions merge into one another, creating a new unity where flower and leaf and insect belong to one and the same blossoming tree” (214). This is the purpose of long and complex books like The Rings of Saturn and Remembrance of Things Past: to draw the lines which link each and all together. To describe the shape of consciousness, to mimic the actions of a body experiencing its progress through the world. I think that is what the photographs I took when wandering attempt, in a failing way, to do. They all show a kind of relentlessness, but in that relentlessness is also, I think, the promise of connectedness—even if not connectedness itself. Each path aims forward, and articulates something of what came before and what might come next, whether trodden in the world or walked on the page.Author’s NoteI’d like to express my thanks to the anonymous reviewers who took time to improve this article. I’m grateful for their insights and engagement, and for the nuance they added to the final copy.References Baumgarten, Murray. “‘Not Knowing What I Should Think:’ The Landscape of Postmemory in W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 5.2 (2007): 267-287. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2007.0000>.Cunningham, Sophie. “Staying with the Trouble.” Australian Book Review 371 (May 2015). 23 June 2016 <https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2015/2500-2015-calibre-prize-winner-staying-with-the-trouble>.Franklin, Ruth. “Rings of Smoke.” The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald. Ed. Lynne Sharon Schwartz. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007. 121-122.Kafatou, Sarah. “An Interview with W.G. Sebald.” Harvard Review 15 (1998): 31-35. Nabokov, Vladimir. “Marcel Proust: The Walk by Swann’s Place.” 1980. Lectures on Literature. London: Picador, 1983. 207-250.Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. Part I. 1913. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff in 1922. London: Chatto & Windus, 1960.———. Time Regained. 1927. Trans. Stephen Hudson. London: Chatto & Windus, 1957.Purpura, Lia. “On Not Pivoting”. Diagram 12.1 (n.d.). 21 June 2018 <http://thediagram.com/12_1/purpura.html>.Schwartz, Lynne Sharon, ed. The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007.Sebald, W.G. The Rings of Saturn. 1995. Trans. Michael Hulse in 1998. London: Vintage, 2002.——. “Le Promeneur Solitaire.” A Place in the Country. Trans. Jo Catling. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2013. 117-154.Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. 2001. London: Granta Publications, 2014.White, Edmund. Proust. London: Phoenix, 1999.Wood, James. The Nearest Thing to Life. London: Jonathan Cape, 2015.Woolf, Virginia. “The Narrow Bridge of Art.” Granite and Rainbow. USA: Harvest Books, 1975.

'The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs.' -- Thomas de Quincey (1849), "The English Mail-Coach" For Thomas de Quincey, the thrust of speed is intimately linked with the thrust of the body. Subjectivity is formed by and through a corporeal experience of acceleration. In this way, De Quincey has the jump on those other lovers of automated speed: the Italian Futurists. That heady clash of bodies, speed and information, or the technological sublime, we characteristically associate with the development of twentieth-century communication is already articulated some sixty years before Marinetti imagines the 'divine fusion' of body and machine. Thomas de Quincey's 1849 ode to the postal service -- "The English Mail Coach" -- functions as a significant text in modernity's velocity culture. Specifically, de Quincey allows us to historicise the critical terms of 'speed', 'body' and 'circulation'. This paper makes some preliminary historical observations about the acceleration of communication and transport systems and how this rapidity might give rise to new forms of subjectivity or the emergence of what Jeffrey T. Schnapp calls 'the kinematic subject'. The perceptual reconfiguration of time and space is central to an understanding of modernity's preoccupation with speed. Rapid data circulation through digital information systems means that distance appears to shrink and time seems to collapse. Manuel Castells calls this a 'new time regime' (429). Temporality now functions according to a double logic: a simultaneous binary of 'the eternal and of the ephemeral'. The contemporary 'manipulation of time' turns on 'instantaneity and eternity: me and the universe, the self and the net' (462-3). For David Harvey the defining feature of postmodernity is 'time-space compression'. Capitalism is 'characterised by speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us' (241). Castells and Harvey are not, of course, the first to notice the degree to which the changing rhythms of a communication vehicle might impact upon perceptions of time and space. In 1909 Marinetti announces its demise: 'Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed'. Yet this death is prefigured some 120 years before by the 18th century author Hannah More in a letter where, quoting Alexander Pope, she illustrates her reaction to the introduction of the mail coach: I have just been thinking that if the amorous poet, who modestly wished to annihilate time and space had lived to see our fortunate days, he would have seen his prophetic visions realised... cards having well-nigh accomplished the first, and mail-coaches the last. (Qtd. in Lewis 264) This letter is dated 1788, only four years after the establishment of the mail coach system. Initially the service ran between London and Bristol so that Hannah More writing from Somerset would complain of being bypassed by this new mode of information circulation: Of the other blessing, the annihilation of space, I cannot partake; mail-coaches, which come to others, come not to me. Letters and newspapers, now that they travel in coaches like gentlemen and ladies, come not within ten miles of my hermitage. (265) More here identifies an important historical factor in the transformation of information networks. It concerns the coupling of transportation and communication: information travels 'in coaches like gentlemen and ladies'. In More's 18th century account the two remain connected while, as James Carey has noted, the significance of the 19th century's invention of the telegraph is that it splits the two processes. The telegraph 'allowed symbols to move independently of geography and independently of and faster than transport' (213). For de Quincey, a pivotal feature of the mail coach is the way in which communication and transportation function coextensively. Recounting his travels on the coach as it distributes news from the Napoleonic wars he notes that 'the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory' (290). For de Quincey, as for other commentators, the mail coach is a political instrument. Through the increasing efficiency of its communication infrastructure, it 'binds the nation together' (Austen 361). As de Quincey puts it 'the mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart' (272). What impresses de Quincey most, however, is the speed of this vehicle. Or perhaps, more accurately, it is a particular relation between the self and speed, which confers on the mail coach a 'glory of motion' (270). By the time he publishes his essay, postal and newspaper circulation by mail-coach is nearly at an end. The last mail coach ceases action in London in 1846 (Daunton 123) and postal distribution begins to be carried out by rail. De Quincey clearly mourns the loss of this form of communication. And his regret depends on the self's perception of speed. That is, to qualify as an authentic act of transportation (of the body, of the post or of language), one must, to some degree, be aware of the systems of circulation, the modes of delivery and the vehicle of communication. One ought to be able to experience the speed at which one travels or the mail is delivered. The body must remain in contact with the message. In de Quincey's view the railway communication system fails for these sorts of reasons: The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, not however as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience ... . Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. (283, emphasis in the original) Perched atop the careening mail coach, the self needs no secondary evidence to confirm its propulsion: 'we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling'. But with the emergence of railway systems, the self somehow becomes cut off or distanced from the mode of transport: 'But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion' (284). To be sure, rail is faster. But that fails to impress de Quincey for the rail cannot offer him the same sublime effect. The mail coach is drawn by 'royal horses like cheetahs' (282) while the train lacks the power to raise even 'an extra bubble in a steam-kettle' (284). The sublimity of speed is also aural. But once again the railroad fails to inspire awe: 'the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail; heartshaking, when heard screaming on the wind ... has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler' (284). In Burke's formulation of the sublime there is danger and terror but there must also be a certain distance from this threat. It is 'simply painful' when we are aroused by causes that 'immediately affect us' but it is sublime when 'we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances' (51) . For de Quincey sitting inside the carriage seems to offer too much safety and distance, the interior reserved as it is for the 'porcelain variety of the human race' (273). Instead, he travels aloft near the driver because of 'the air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat' (275). And he has the possibility of reining them in himself: 'the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving' (275)1. The closer he is to the ministers of his locomotion, the better de Quincey likes it. The more he becomes the agent of his own speed, the more immediate, authentic and sublime seems his journey. For de Quincey, then, the superiority of the mail coach over the railroad lies not in terms of absolute speed but rather it concerns issues about the body's experience of and relation to that speed. As Matthew Schneider (1995) puts it 'the difference between the two with respect to their speed, privileges mail coaches by virtue of their violent immediacy, their ability to transmit the actual or living sensations rather than one that is intermediate or representational' (152)2. In a fascinating paper about the correlation between speed and subjectivity Jeffrey T. Schnapp identifies the mail coach in general and de Quincey in particular as emblematic of an 'inaugural moment' in the development of an 'anthropology of speed' (3). With a quick side swipe at the ahistorical and apocalyptic underpinning of Paul Virilio's Speed and Politics, Schnapp argues that although speed has always been 'an agent of individuation' it is with modernity that it begins to depend on the relation between self and vehicle: ... the mere experience of riding on horseback was not enough to establish a modern culture of velocity. Speed's rise as a cultural thematic, its move into an everyday realm of perceptibility, its adoption as sacrament of modern individualism, became possible only with the development of mechanical buffers between rider, horse, and roadway: buffers that enable new fantasies of attachment, first, between rider and engine, and, then, according to a more complex logic, between rider, engine, vehicle, and/or landscape. (10-1) What is particularly productive about Schnapp's account is that he schematises the history of transportation in terms of the relation between speed, body and vehicle. For Schnapp this is a pivotal dynamic. De Quincey's equestrian desire and his disdain for railroad travel, is part of a historical process where individuality comes to be 'identified with administration of one's own speed' (14). In Schnapp's model, there are 'two concurrent yet distinct experiences of velocity', one that he calls 'thrill-based' and the other 'commodity-based'. The first is experienced in modes such as on top of the mail-coach and later, cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes. 'Commodity-based' refers to train and bus travel. The difference between the two is that thrill-based transportation occurs when the passenger 'can envisage himself as the author of his velocity' while in 'commodity-based' forms the traveller is 'shielded from the natural environment and the engine, and passively submits himself to velocity' (18-9). De Quincey's essay is a valuable resource for communications historiography. Like Jacques Derrida, he recognises how the rhythms of the postal service function to construct identity. As a system of circulation and exchange, the post office institutionalises modes of correspondence, producing and regulating particular subjectivities. And like Postman Pat, de Quincey knows the corporeal pleasures of delivering the mail. Footnotes There are also issues of class at work here. Tickets were more expensive to sit inside the carriage which de Quincey, then a student at Oxford, could not afford. He attempts to reverse these class distinctions by arguing that 'inside which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise' (187). The secondary material on de Quincey is quite extensive. In the last 15 years his work has been investigated from a number of different angles including poststructuralist approaches to language and his transitional status as a figure between Romanticism and Modernism. As well as Schneider, see Clej and Snyder. References Austen, Brian. British Mail-Coach Services 1784-1850. New York and London: Garland, 1986. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton. 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Clej, Alina. A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. Daunton, M.J. Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840. London: The Athlone Press, 1985. De Quincey, Thomas. "The English Mail-Coach." The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. Ed. David Masson. Vol. 13. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1890. Derrida, Jacques. The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1990. Lewis, W.S., ed. Horace Walpole's Correspondence. Vol 31. New Haven: Yale UP, 1961. Marinetti, FT. "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism." First published 1909. Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. "Crash (Speed as Engine of Individuation)." Modernism/Modernity 6.1 (1999): 1-49. Schneider, Matthew. Original Ambivalence: Autobiography and Violence in Thomas De Quincey. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Snyder, Robert Lance, ed. Thomas De Quincey Bicentenary Studies. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1985. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotexte, 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ester Milne. "'The Ministers of Locomotion': Some Historical Speculations on Velocity Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php>. Chicago style: Ester Milne, "'The Ministers of Locomotion': Some Historical Speculations on Velocity Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ester Milne. (2000) 'The ministers of locomotion': some historical speculations on velocity culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php> ([your date of access]).

During my early introduction to architecture I found that I was motivated not only by matters pertaining to what architecture is, but also, to what it can do. Thus, the questions motivating this work derive from my education in architecture which, at their most rudimentary level, entail a deep fascination with the nature of space, and thus the problem of time. And, subsequently, a practical desire to understand the conditions that constituted experience, and thus perception, sensation and mind. My interest also developed from a general disposition towards others and world founded in principles of human equality and rights with respect to both freedom and responsibility. During my years practicing architecture, these questions as they were brought through the perspective of design continued to inspire me. At the same time, my interest in investigating these questions through theoretical and philosophical research persisted until my aspiration to engage in critical thought outpaced my desire to practice. Hence, a turn in career to work as an academic in the discipline of architecture and the area of architecture theory. This research may be perceived by some as situated outside the realm of architecture. However, this is not the case. My approach to architecture theory is not one that begins with a study of the object, or, for some, one might say the subject of architecture. That is, if the object is understood as the manifestation in thought, process or form of the building or built environment (real or conceived) itself; and if the subject is understood as the thought or idea emanating from the mind of the architect (as author). While there is much architecture theory advanced from this perspective lining my own bookshelves and utilized in my work as an educator. The concerns that have always called me towards thinking about architecture as the imagined and constructed world in which we live are those that query the very nature of concepts, notions, ideologies and intellectual constructions and beliefs upon which culture and society – architecture as both a cultural product and a social actor – are formed. This goes, as well, to the considerations that motivate my concern for people, not users or inhabitants as such, but as ontologically situated beings in the world. Accordingly, my work primarily deals with the content, history and effects of architecture as it relates to theories of space, time, the body, and cognition. Employing and developing theories and methods from disciplines including philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, political, social and economic theory, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences in the broadest sense. Admittedly, the nature of theoretical discourse has shown itself to be problematic over the past fifty-plus years; it has also proven to be transformative. Critical thinkers in the late 1960s developed a sustained critique of their philosophical predecessors – primarily in regard to Marx on one hand and Heidegger on the other – with a critique of social history and a displacement of metaphysics resulting in a repositioning of social and cultural discourse. Of course, the debate unfolded against the philosophical and aesthetic background of not only Marx and Heidegger, but also Nietzsche, Hegel and Freud on one hand, and Manet, Cézanne, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, Wagner and Debussy on the other. In architecture, the debate extended to Ruskin and Wölfflin, and to Wright and Corbusier, amongst others. This period, in itself, refers to an unprecedented artistic, scientific, economic, and technological mutation. Prevalent underpinnings remain identifiable, for instance an attack on the absolute nature of knowledge, which has brought about a fundamental rethinking of both the nature of consciousness, as well as a critique of science. As Foucault suggested, one of the great problems that arose in the 1950s was that of the political status of science and the ideological functions that it could serve. Another rebuke can be seen as the challenge to the primacy of truth as an adequation of subject to thing. This culminated in a radical critique of subjectivity resulting, some years later, in the so-called post-humanist-subject. In order to be rid of the subject itself, Foucault, in ‘Truth and Power’ (1977) argued that it was necessary to dispense with the essentialist subject both at the extremes and in-between the enlightenment’s humanist subject and its ideals of knowledge as self-constituting; as well as phenomenology’s fabrication of the subject as evolving through and embodying the course of history. Reflecting on this history, that post-war moment of theory, one cannot help but be struck by the complexity and the ambiguity of the adventure; qualities most evident in the fact that new spaces and new means of writing and drawing, of thinking and making emerged. Ideas that modified our understanding of both communication and the image, of both space and time. Discourses, when combined with a reflexivity within certain architectures and certain texts, rendered them somehow indefinitely open. In the 1960s, literary theory transformed thought on both sides of the Atlantic. For instance, Roland Barthes’s de-sanctioning of the biography-centric author, or the removal of authority from the author turned scriptor in ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967), or Julia Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality with ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’ (1969). These works impacted our thinking on linguistic phenomena and the origin (or non-originality) of textual content and further, on the invention of new forms of writing and affective relations. Such theories informed and redirected thinking in architecture, for instance, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas’s work ‘Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work’ was published in the first issue of Oppositions, an architectural journal produced between 1973 and 1984 by the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. With this, the influence of the French intellectual climate as well as the Italian discourse on semiotics was brought to the centre of Anglo-American discourse in architecture theory. The intellectual trajectory along which this history is traced and the terrain on which it now takes place will be recognisable to anyone familiar with the work of such thinkers as Henri Bergson, Louis Althusser, Gabriel Tarde, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and, of course, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and Maurizio Lazzarato. The importance of the radically original works that emerged in the seventies and eighties cannot be overestimated, for instance: Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and his lectures at the Collège de France, The Birth of Biopolitics, and Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia volumes Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These works, translated into English shortly after their original publication, were being read throughout many disciplines outside of philosophy including schools of architecture, and their influence can only be said to have increased. I share the above brief history so as to situate my work for those less familiar with the work of theory – whether architecture or otherwise – as this, too, is the intellectual trajectory and exploration along which my own work, as well as many of my contemporaries, travels. In my own work, the influence of the nineteenth/ twentieth-century French vitalist philosopher Henri Bergson – the great thinker of time and, as Walter Benjamin suggested, a seminal source to consult in considering the problem of experience – has quite profoundly informed my thinking and shaped its outcomes. Both with respect to time and space as well as body and brain, his influence is reflected in the title of this volume. That said, this is not a collection of chapters on Bergson’s philosophy. It is a collection on critical concepts I believe to be of importance for contemporary critique, delivered through topics that are relevant – at times directly and at others indirectly – to our current moment. This is a work of great commitment and it has sustained itself over time. It is my hope the reader finds some value in this as well.

Art Imitating ArtThis article discusses the global, historical and literary references that are present in the video game franchise Bayonetta. In particular, references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the works of Dr John Dee, and European traditions of witchcraft are examined. Bayonetta is modern in the sense that she is a woman of the world. Her character shows how history and literature may be used, re-used, and evolve into new formats, and how modern games travel abroad through time and space.Drawing creative inspiration from other works is nothing new. Ideas and themes, art and literature are frequently borrowed and recast. Carmel Cedro cites Northrop Frye in the example of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. These writers created stories and characters that have developed a level of acclaim and resonated with many individuals, resulting in countless homages over the years. The forms that these appropriations take vary widely. Media formats, such as film adaptations and even books, take the core characters or narrative from the original and re-work them into a different context. For example, the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1883 was adapted into the 2002 Walt Disney animated film Treasure Planet. The film maintained the concepts of the original narrative and retained key characters but re-imaged them to fit the science fiction genre (Clements and Musker).The video-game franchise Bayonetta draws inspiration from distinct sources creating the foundation for the universe and some plot points to enhance the narrative. The main sources are Dante’s Divine Comedy, the projections of John Dee and his mystical practices as well as the medieval history of witches.The Vestibule: The Concept of BayonettaFigure 1: Bayonetta Concept ArtBayonetta ConceptsThe concept of Bayonetta was originally developed by video game designer Hideki Kamiya, known previously for his work including The Devil May Cry and the Resident Evil game series. The development of Bayonetta began with Kamiya requesting a character design that included three traits: a female lead, a modern witch, and four guns. This description laid the foundations for what was to become the hack and slash fantasy heroine that would come to be known as Bayonetta. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri during the 1300s, was a revolutionary piece of literature for its time, in that it was one of the first texts that formalised the vernacular Italian language by omitting the use of Latin, the academic language of the time. Dante’s work was also revolutionary in its innovative contemplations on religion, art and sciences, creating a literary collage of such depth that it would continue to inspire hundreds of years after its first publication.Figure 2: Domenico di Michelino’s fresco of Dante and his Divine Comedy, surrounded by depictions of scenes in the textBayonetta explores the themes of The Divine Comedy in a variety of ways, using them as an obvious backdrop, along with subtle homages and references scattered throughout the game. The world of Bayonetta is set in the Trinity of Realities, three realms that co-exist forming the universe: Inferno, Paradiso and the Chaos realm—realm of humans—and connected by Purgitorio—the intersection of the trinity. In the game, Bayonetta travels throughout these realms, primarily in the realm of Purgitorio, the area in which magical and divine entities may conduct their business. However, there are stages within the game where Bayonetta finds herself in Paradiso and the human realm. This is a significant factor relating to The Divine Comedy as these realms also form the areas explored by Dante in his epic poem. The depth of these parallels is not exclusive to factors in Dante’s masterpiece, as there are also references to other art and literature inspired by Dante’s legacy. For example, the character Rodin in Bayonetta runs a bar named “The Gates of Hell.” In 1917 French artist Auguste Rodin completed a sculpture, The Gates of Hell depicting scenes and characters from The Divine Comedy. Rodin’s bar in Bayonetta is manifested as a dark impressionist style of architecture, with an ominous atmosphere. In early concept art, the proprietor of the bar was to be named Mephisto (Kamiya) derived from “Mephistopheles”, another name for the devil in some mythologies. Figure 3: Auguste Rodin's Gate of Hell, 1917Aspects of Dante’s surroundings and the theological beliefs of his time can be found in Bayonetta, as well as in the 2013 anime film adaptation Bayonetta, Bloody Fate. The Christian virtues, revered during the European Middle Ages, manifest themselves as enemies and adversaries that Bayonetta must combat throughout the game. Notably, the names of the cardinal virtues serve as “boss ranked” foes. Enemies within a game, usually present at the end of a level and more difficult to defeat than regular enemies within “Audito Sphere” of the “Laguna Hierarchy” (high levels of the hierarchy within the game), are named in Italian; Fortitudo, Temperantia, Lustitia, and Sapientia. These are the virtues of Classical Greek Philosophy, and reflect Dante’s native language as well as the impact the philosophies of Ancient Greece had on his writings. The film adaption of Bayonetta incorporated many elements from the game. To adjust the game effectively, it was necessary to augment the plot in order to fit the format of this alternate media. As it was no longer carried by gameplay, the narrative became paramount. The diverse plot points of the new narrative allowed for novel possibilities for further developing the role of The Divine Comedy in Bayonetta. At the beginning of the movie, for example, Bayonetta enters as a nun, just as she does in the game, only here she is in church praying rather than in a graveyard conducting a funeral. During her prayer she recites “I am the way into the city of woe, abandon all hope, oh, ye who enter here,” which is a Canto of The Divine Comedy. John Dee and the AngelsDr John Dee (1527—1608), a learned man of Elizabethan England, was a celebrated philosopher, mathematician, scientist, historian, and teacher. In addition, he was a researcher of magic and occult arts, as were many of his contemporaries. These philosopher magicians were described as Magi and John Dee was the first English Magus (French). He was part of a school of study within the Renaissance intelligensia that was influenced by the then recently discovered works of the gnostic Hermes Trismegistus, thought to be of great antiquity. This was in an age when religion, philosophy and science were intertwined. Alchemy and chemistry were still one, and astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe cast horoscopes. John Dee engaged in spiritual experiments that were based in his Christian faith but caused him to be viewed in some circles as dangerously heretical (French).Based on the texts of Hermes Trismegistas and other later Christian philosophical and theological writers such as Dionysius the Areopagite, Dee and his contemporaries believed in celestial hierarchies and levels of existence. These celestial hierarchies could be accessed by “real artificial magic,” or applied science, that included mathematics, and the cabala, or the mystical use of permutations of Hebrew texts, to access supercelestial powers (French). In his experiments in religious magic, Dee was influenced by the occult writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486—1535). In Agrippa’s book, De Occulta Philosophia, there are descriptions for seals, symbols and tables for summoning angels, to which Dee referred in his accounts of his own magic experiments (French). Following his studies, Dee constructed a table with a crystal placed on it. By use of suitable rituals prescribed by Agrippa and others, Dee believed he summoned angels within the crystal, who could be seen and conversed with. Dee did not see these visions himself, but conversed with the angels through a skryer, or medium, who saw and heard the celestial beings. Dee recorded his interviews in his “Spiritual Diaries” (French). Throughout Bayonetta there are numerous seals and devices that would appear to be inspired by the work of Dee or other Renaissance Magi.In these sessions, John Dee, through his skryer Edward Kelley, received instruction from several angels. The angels led him to believe he was to be a prophet in the style of the biblical Elijah or, more specifically like Enoch, whose prophesies were detailed in an ancient book that was not part of the Bible, but was considered by many scholars as divinely inspired. As a result, these experiments have been termed “Enochian conversations.” The prophesies received by Dee foretold apocalyptic events that were to occur soon and God’s plan for the world. The angels also instructed Dee in a system of magic to allow him to interpret the prophesies and participate in them as a form of judge. Importantly, Dee was also taught elements of the supposed angelic language, which came to be known as “Enochian” (Ouellette). Dee wrote extensively about his interviews with the angels and includes statements of their hierarchy (French, Ouellette). This is reflected in the “Laguna Hierarchy” of Bayonetta, sharing similarities in name and appearance of the angels Dee had described. Platinum Games creative director Jean-Pierre Kellams acted as writer and liaison, assisting the English adaptation of Bayonetta and was tasked by Hideki Kamiya to develop Bayonetta’s incantations and subsequently the language of the angels within the game (Kellams).The Hammer of WitchesOne of the earliest and most integral components of the Bayonetta franchise is the fact that the title character is a witch. Witches, sorcerers and other practitioners of magic have been part of folklore for centuries. Hideki Kamiya stated that the concept of” classical witches” was primarily a European legend. In order to emulate this European dimension, he had envisioned Bayonetta as having a British accent which resulted in the game being released in English first, even though Platinum Games is a Japanese company (Kamiya). The Umbra Witch Clan hails from Europe within the Bayonetta Universe and relates more closely to the traditional European medieval witch tradition (Various), although some of the charms Bayonetta possesses acknowledge the witches of different parts of the world and their cultural context. The Evil Harvest Rosary is said to have been created by a Japanese witch in the game. Bayonetta herself and other witches of the game use their hair as a conduit to summon demons and is known as “wicked weaves” within the game. She also creates her tight body suit out of her hair, which recedes when she decides to use a wicked weave. Using hair in magic harks back to a legend that witches often utilised hair in their rituals and spell casting (Guiley). It is also said that women with long and beautiful hair were particularly susceptible to being seduced by Incubi, a form of demon that targets sleeping women for sexual intercourse. According to some texts (Kramer), witches formed into the beings that they are through consensual sex with a devil, as stated in Malleus Maleficarum of the 1400s, when he wrote that “Modern Witches … willingly embrace this most foul and miserable form of servitude” (Kramer). Bayonetta wields her sexuality as proficiently as she does any weapon. This lends itself to the belief that women of such a seductive demeanour were consorts to demons.Purgitorio is not used in the traditional sense of being a location of the afterlife, as seen in The Divine Comedy, rather it is depicted as a dimension that exists concurrently within the human realm. Those who exist within this Purgitorio cannot be seen with human eyes. Bayonetta’s ability to enter and exit this space with the use of magic is likened to the myth that witches were known to disappear for periods of time and were purported to be “spirited away” from the human world (Kamiya).Recipes for gun powder emerge from as early as the 1200s but, to avoid charges of witchcraft due to superstitions of the time, they were hidden by inventors such as Roger Bacon (McNab). The use of “Bullet Arts” in Bayonetta as the main form of combat for Umbra Witches, and the fact that these firearm techniques had been honed by witches for centuries before the witch hunts, implies that firearms were indeed used by dark magic practitioners until their “discovery” by ordinary humans in the Bayonetta universe. In addition to this, that “Lumen Sages” are not seen to practice bullet arts, builds on the idea of guns being a practice of black magic. “Lumen Sages” are the Light counterpart and adversaries of the Umbra Witches in Bayonetta. The art of Alchemy is incorporated into Bayonetta as a form of witchcraft. Players may create their own health, vitality, protective and mana potions through a menu screen. This plays on the taboo of chemistry and alchemy of the 1500s. As mentioned, John Dee's tendency to dabble in such practices was considered by some to be heretical (French, Ouellette).Light and dark forces are juxtaposed in Bayonetta through the classic adversaries, Angels and Demons. The moral flexibility of both the light and dark entities in the game leaves the principles of good an evil in a state of ambiguity, which allows for uninhibited flow in the story and creates a non-linear and compelling narrative. Through this non-compliance with the pop culture counterparts of light and dark, gamers are left to question the foundations of old cultural norms. This historical context lends itself to the Bayonetta story not only by providing additional plot points, but also by justifying the development decisions that occur in order to truly flesh out Bayonetta’s character.ConclusionCompelling story line, characters with layered personality, and the ability to transgress boundaries of time and travel are all factors that provide a level of depth that has become an increasingly important aspect in modern video gameplay. Gamers love “Easter eggs,” the subtle references and embellishments scattered throughout a game that make playing games like Bayonetta so enjoyable. Bayonetta herself is a global traveller whose journeying is not limited to “abroad.” She transgresses cultural, time, and spatial boundaries. The game is a mosaic of references to spatial time dimensions, literary, and historical sources. This mix of borrowings has produced an original gameplay and a unique storyline. Such use of literature, mythology, and history to enhance the narrative creates a quest game that provides “meaningful play” (Howard). This process of creation of new material from older sources is a form of renewal. As long as contemporary culture presents literature and history to new audiences, the older texts will not be forgotten, but these elements will undergo a form of renewal and restoration and the present-day culture will be enhanced as a result. In the words of Bayonetta herself: “As long as there’s music, I’ll keep on dancing.”ReferencesCedro, Carmel. "Dolly Varden: Sweet Inspiration." Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 37-46. French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London: London, Routledge and K. Paul, 1972. Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology. Infobase Publishing, 2009. Howard, Jeff. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Wellesley, Mass.: A.K. Peters, 2008. Kamiya, Hideki.Bayonetta. Bayonetta. Videogame. Sega, Japan, 2009.Kellams, Jean-Pierre. "Butmoni Coronzon (from the Mouth of the Witch)." Platinum Games 2009.Kramer, Heinrich. The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Eds. Sprenger, Jakob, or joint author, and Montague Summers. New York: Dover, 1971.McNab, C. Firearms: The Illustrated Guide to Small Arms of the World. Parragon, 2008.Ouellette, Francois. "Prophet to the Elohim: John Dee's Enochian Conversations as Christian Apocalyptic Discourse." Master of Arts thesis. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2004.Treasure Planet. The Walt Disney Company, 2003.Various. "Bayonetta Wikia." 2016.

OPENING Welcome to this special feature of Approaches, which was inspired by the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting. Organised by the Giovanni Ferrari Music Therapy School of Padua, with the support of the Italian Association of Professional Music Therapists (AIM) and the Italian Confederation of Associations and Music Therapy Schools (CONFIAM), this event took place on 22nd September 2018 in Padua, Italy. Reflecting the theme of this meeting, Dialogue on Music Therapy Interventions for Dementia and End-of-Life Care: Voices from Beyond the Sea, this special feature aims to raise awareness and promote dialogue around music therapy in the Mediterranean region with a focus on dementia and end-of-life care settings. The special feature contains brief country reports. Although reports vary in writing style and depth of information, each report has a two-fold overall focus: to outline briefly the current state of music therapy within each country and to describe particular applications of music therapy within dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Additionally, this special feature contains a Preface by Melissa Brotons, who was the keynote speaker at the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting, as well as a conference report outlining key aspects of this meeting. THE SEA AROUND US: A NOTE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN The name of the Mediterranean Sea originates from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning “middle of the earth”. This name was first used by the Romans reflecting their perception of the sea as the middle or the centre of the earth. Interestingly, while perceived as a middle point, the Mediterranean was also experienced as something that surrounded people. Thus, both the Ancient Greeks and the Romans called the Mediterranean “our sea” or “the sea around us” (mare nostrum in Latin, orἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ’ἡμᾶς [hē thálassa hē kath’hēmâs] in Greek). The Mediterranean Sea is linked to the Atlantic Ocean. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Asia Minor, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by Western Asia. Since antiquity the Mediterranean has been a vital waterway for merchants and travellers, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region. The Mediterranean region has been the birthplace of influential civilizations on its shores, and the history of the region is crucial to understanding the origins and evolvement of the modern Western world. Throughout its history the region has been dramatically affected by conflict, war and occupation. The Roman Empire and the Arab Empire are past examples with lasting footprints in the region; while ongoing conflicts in Syria, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are contemporary examples, some of which have led to a refugee crisis in the region. As such, the history of the region has been accompanied by endeavours and struggles to define and redefine national identities, territories and borders. Interestingly, Cyprus is one of just two nations, and the first one in the world, to include its map on its flag (the second is Kosovo – a Balkan country close to the Mediterranean region). The sea touches three continents, and today the Mediterranean region can be understood, framed and divided differently based on varying geopolitical and other perspectives (see, for example, the Eastern Mediterranean Region of the World Health Organization [WHO, 2020]). For the purposes of this special feature, we understand the Mediterranean region as including 12 countries in Europe, five in Asia and five in Africa. These countries, in clockwise order, are Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Despite its relatively small geographical area, the Mediterranean region is characterised by the richness of cultures, religions and musical traditions. Likewise, there is a dramatic diversity in terms of political and socio-economic situations. This diversity is equally reflected in the development of dementia and end-of-life care in these countries. Regarding dementia care, in 2016, the Monegasque Association for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease, published the Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report where is underlined that “[in] many Mediterranean countries, there is still little knowledge about the problems surrounding Alzheimer’s disease, which remains under-estimated and insufficiently documented” (AMPA, 2016, p.7). The report identified a concerning rise in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders in the Mediterranean area, but little biomedical, fundamental and clinical research, unequal and unspecialised access to home care services, and also a general lack of training among professionals and a lack of status recognition for family carers. In terms of end-of-life care, in 2017 the first systematic attempt to map and assess the development of palliative care in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region was published (Osman et al., 2017). Results demonstrate that palliative care development in Eastern Mediterranean countries is scarce. Most countries are at the very initial stages of palliative care development, with only a small fraction of patients needing palliative care being able to access it. This situation also applies to the integration and provision of palliative care within care homes and nursing homes offering long-term care for older people (Froggatt et al., 2017). Recent reviews also demonstrate that palliative care is variable and inconsistent across the region, while various barriers exist to the development of palliative care delivery. Examples of such barriers include the lack of relevant national policies, limited palliative care training for professionals and volunteers, as well as weak public awareness around death and dying (Fadhil et al., 2017). Similar barriers around legislation, training and public awareness are met in the development of music therapy in many Mediterranean countries. Music therapy, as a contemporary profession and discipline, and indeed its applications in dementia and end-of-life care, are equally limited and characterised by diversity across the region. As such, this special feature is a modest attempt to bring together perspectives and present initial information for areas of work which are not widely developed, explored or documented so far in most Mediterranean countries. Hopefully this publication will raise further awareness and inform the future development of music therapy with specific reference to its potential applications to dementia and end-of-life care in each country. This becomes even more relevant considering the increase of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cancer, in the region (Fadhil et al., 2017). BEHIND THE SCENES Inviting authors Although the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting included speakers only from a few Mediterranean countries, this special feature attempted to include authors from every single Mediterranean country. In addition to inviting the speakers from the meeting to contribute to this special feature, we invited authors from each of the other Mediterranean countries. After listing all the countries, we tried to identify music therapists in each of them. We drew on our own professional networks, as well as information available on the websites of the European Music Therapy Confederation (EMTC) and the World Federation for Music Therapy (WFMT), along with relevant publications in the open access journals Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy and Voices: A World Forum of Music Therapy. In countries where we could not identify a music therapist (with or without direct experience of working in dementia and end-of-life care), we attempted to identify and invite other relevant professionals with an explicit interest in music therapy. When this second option was impossible, no authors were invited. There were also cases where potential authors who met the above criteria did not respond to the invitation. As such, this special feature does not include a report from every Mediterranean country. The absence of reports from some countries, however, does not necessarily reflect the lack of music therapy work in these countries. Some of the contributing authors are members or representatives of professional associations and some are not. In either case, their contribution to this special feature aims to represent their views and experiences as individuals without claiming to represent national or other professional bodies. Depending on the position of each individual author, different aspects of music therapy may be explored, prioritised, silenced or challenged in each country report. We want to be clear: these reports are not about absolute ‘truths’ and do not provide comprehensive accounts of music therapy and of its applications in dementia and end-of-life care in each country. Instead of being a ‘full stop’, we see these reports as an opening; as invitations for dialogue, debate, critique and mutual growth. We encourage readers to engage with the contents of this special feature critically; being informed by their own experiences and practices, as well as by related literature and historical trajectories in the field (e.g. De Backer et al., 2013; Dileo-Maranto, 1993; Hesser & Heinemann, 2015; Ridder & Tsiris, 2015a; Schmid, 2014; Stegemann et al., 2016). The challenge of the review process All reports were peer-reviewed. Although we strived to ensure a ‘blind’ review process, this was difficult to achieve in certain cases due to the nature of the reports and the small size of the music therapy communities in certain countries. We invited music therapists living and working in Mediterranean countries to serve as reviewers. We also invited some music therapists living in other parts of the world, given their experience and role within international music therapy bodies and initiatives. Reviewers were requested to evaluate not only the accuracy of the information provided in each report but also the reflexive stance of the authors. This comes with acknowledging that in some instances authors and reviewers came from diverse professional and disciplinary spheres, where music therapy can be understood and practised differently. This was particularly relevant to country reports where we could not identify reviewers with ‘inland’ knowledge of the music therapy field and of its relevance to local dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Towards hospitality Professionalisation issues – which seem to be a common denominator across the reports of this special feature – are often an area of controversy and conflict, where alliances and oppositions have emerged over the history of the music therapy profession within and beyond the Mediterranean region. Writing a country report, and indeed reviewing and editing a collection of such reports, can be a ‘hot potato’! Although it is impossible to remain apolitical, we argue (and we have actively tried to promote this through our editorial and reviewing work) that a constructive dialogue needs to be characterised by reflexivity. It needs to be underpinned by openness and transparency regarding our own values and assumptions, our pre-understanding, our standpoint, as well as our invested interests. Professionalisation conflicts within some Mediterranean countries have led to the development of multiple and, at times, antagonistic associations and professional bodies. In Spain, for example, there are over 40 associations (Mercadal-Brotons et al., 2015), whereas in Italy there are four main associations (Scarlata, 2015). In other countries, such as Greece (Tsiris, 2011), there are communication challenges and conflicting situations between professional association, training programmes and governmental departments. Although such challenges tend to remain unarticulated and ‘hidden’ from the professional literature and discourse, they have real implications for the development of the profession within each context and for the morale of each music therapy community. Overall, this special feature aims to promote a spirit of open dialogue and mutual respect. It is underpinned by a commitment to remain in ongoing dialogue while accepting that we can agree to disagree. As editors we tried to remain true to this commitment, and this became particularly evident in cases where reported practices and concepts were at odds with our own perspectives and understandings of music therapy and its development as a contemporary profession and discipline in Western countries. Indeed, the perspectives presented in some of the reports may sit on the edge or even outside the ‘professional canon’ of music therapy as developed in many contemporary Western countries. In line with the vision of Approaches, this special feature opens up a space where local-global tensions can be voiced (Ridder & Tsiris, 2015b), allowing multiple translations, transitions and borders to be explored. What becomes evident is that definitions of music therapy are inextricably linked to cultural, including spiritual and political, meanings and practices of music, health and illness. Mediterranean people are known for their hospitality but also for their passionate temperament. We hope that this special feature creates a hospitable and welcoming environment for professional and intercultural exchange where passion can fuel creative action and collaboration instead of conflict. We invite the readers to engage with each report in this spirit of openness and reflexivity. This special feature will hopefully be only the start of future dialogue, debate and constructive critique. To this end, we also invite people to add their voices and perspectives regarding music therapy in the Mediterranean region in relation to dementia and end-of-life care. Music therapists, palliative care practitioners and other professionals are welcome to submit their own papers in the form of articles, reports or letters to the editor. References AMPA (2016). Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report 2016: Overview – challenges – perspectives. Retrieved from https://ampa-monaco.com/files/MAA_Rapport_GB_web_sml.pdf De Backer, J., Nöcker Ribaupierre, M., & Sutton, J. (2013). Music therapy in Europe: The identity and professionalisation of European music therapy, with an overview and history of the European Music Therapy Confederation. In J. De Backer & J. Sutton (Eds.), The music in music therapy: Psychodynamic music therapy in Europe: Clinical, theoretical and research approaches (pp. 24-36). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Dileo-Maranto, C. (Ed.). (1993). Music therapy: International perspectives. Saint Louis, MI: MMB Music, Inc. Fadhil, I., Lyons, G., & Payne, S. (2017). Barriers to, and opportunities for, palliative care development in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Lancet Oncology, 18(3), e176-e184. Froggatt, K., Payne, S., Morbey, H., Edwards, M., Finne-Soveri, H., Gambassi, G., Pasman, H. R., Szczerbinska, K., & Van den Block, L. (2017). Palliative care development in European care homes and nursing homes: Application of a typology of implementation. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 18(6), 550.e7-550.e14. Hesser, B., & Heinemann, H. (Eds.). (2015). Music as a global resource: Solutions for social and economic issues (4th ed.). New York, NY: United Nations Headquarters. Mercadal-Brotons, M., Sabbatella, P. L., & Del Moral Marcos, M. T. (2017). Music therapy as a profession in Spain: Past, present and future. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 9(1), 111-119. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/mercadal-brotons-a20150509 Osman, H., Rihan, A., Garralda, E., Rhee, J.Y., Pons, J.J., de Lima, L., Tfayli, A., & Centeno, C. (2017). Atlas of palliative care in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Houston: IAHPC Press. Retrieved from https://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/43303 Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (Eds.). (2015a). Special issue on ‘Music therapy in Europe: Paths of professional development’. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1). Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (2015b). ‘Thinking globally, acting locally’: Music therapy in Europe. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 3-9. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Scarlata, E. (2015). Italy. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 161-162. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015 Schmid, J. (2014). Music therapy training courses in Europe. Thesis at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria. Stegemann, T., Schmidt, H. U., Fitzthum, E., & Timmermann, T. (Eds.). (2016). Music therapy training programmes in Europe: Theme and variations. Reichert Verlag. Tsiris, G. (2011). Music therapy in Greece. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. Retrieved from https://voices.no/community/?q=country-of-the-month/2011-music-therapy-greece World Health Organization (WHO) (2020). Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Countries. Retrieved from: http://www.emro.who.int/countries.html

Introduction The academic area known as food studies—incorporating elements from disciplines including anthropology, folklore, history, sociology, gastronomy, and cultural studies as well as a range of multi-disciplinary approaches—asserts that cooking and eating practices are less a matter of nutrition (maintaining life by absorbing nutrients from food) and more a personal or group expression of various social and/or cultural actions, values or positions. The French philosopher, Michel de Certeau agrees, arguing, moreover, that there is an urgency to name and unpick (what he identifies as) the “minor” practices, the “multifarious and silent reserve of procedures” of everyday life. Such practices are of crucial importance to all of us, as although seemingly ordinary, and even banal, they have the ability to “organise” our lives (48). Within such a context, the following aims to consider the influence and significance of an important (although largely unstudied) professional figure in rural and regional economic life: the country food preparer variously known as the local chef or cook. Such an approach is obviously framed by the concept of “cultural economy”. This term recognises the convergence, and interdependence, of the spheres of the cultural and the economic (see Scott 335, for an influential discussion on how “the cultural geography of space and the economic geography of production are intertwined”). Utilising this concept in relation to chefs and cooks seeks to highlight how the ways these figures organise (to use de Certeau’s term) the social and cultural lives of those in their communities are embedded in economic practices and also how, in turn, their economic contributions are dependent upon social and cultural practices. This initial mapping of the influence and significance of the rural and regional chef in one rural and regional area, therefore, although necessarily different in approach and content, continues the application of such converged conceptualisations of the cultural and economic as Teema Tairu’s discussion of the social, recreational and spiritual importance of food preparation and consumption by the unemployed in Finland, Guy Redden’s exploration of how supermarket products reflect shared values, and a series of analyses of the cultural significance of individual food products, such as Richard White’s study of vegemite. While Australians, both urban and rural, currently enjoy access to an internationally renowned food culture, it is remarkable to consider that it has only been during the years following the Second World War that these sophisticated and now much emulated ways of eating and cooking have developed. It is, indeed, only during the last half century that Australian eating habits have shifted from largely Anglo-Saxon influenced foods and meals that were prepared and eaten in the home, to the consumption of a wider range of more international and sophisticated foods and meals that are, increasingly, prepared by others and eaten outside the consumer’s residence. While a range of commonly cited influences has prompted this relatively recent revolution in culinary practice—including post-war migration, increasing levels of prosperity, widespread international travel, and the forces of globalisation—some of this change owes a debt to a series of influential individual figures. These tastemakers have included food writers and celebrity chefs; with early exponents including Margaret Fulton, Graham Kerr and Charmaine Solomon (see Brien). The findings of this study suggests that many restaurant chefs, and other cooks, have similarly played, and continue to take, a key role in the lives of not only the, necessarily, limited numbers of individuals who dine in a particular eatery or the other chefs and/or cooks trained in that establishment (Ruhlman, Reach), but also the communities in which they work on a much broader scale. Considering Chefs In his groundbreaking study, A History of Cooks and Cooking, Australian food historian Michael Symons proposes that those who prepare food are worthy of serious consideration because “if ‘we are what we eat’, cooks have not just made our meals, but have also made us. They have shaped our social networks, our technologies, arts and religions” (xi). Writing that cooks “deserve to have their stories told often and well,” and that, moreover, there is a “need to invent ways to think about them, and to revise our views about ourselves in their light” (xi), Symons’s is a clarion call to investigate the role and influence of cooks. Charles-Allen Baker-Clark has explicitly begun to address this lacunae in his Profiles from the Kitchen: What Great Cooks Have Taught Us About Ourselves and Our Food (2006), positing not only how these figures have shaped our relationships with food and eating, but also how these relationships impact on identities, culture and a range of social issues including those of social justice, spirituality and environmental sustainability. With the growing public interest in celebrities, it is perhaps not surprising that, while such research on chefs and/or cooks is still in its infancy, most of the existing detailed studies on individuals focus on famed international figures such as Marie-Antoine Carême (Bernier; Kelly), Escoffier (James; Rachleff; Sanger), and Alexis Soyer (Brandon; Morris; Ray). Despite an increasing number of tabloid “tell-all” surveys of contemporary celebrity chefs, which are largely based on mass media sources and which display little concern for historical or biographical accuracy (Bowyer; Hildred and Ewbank; Simpson; Smith), there have been to date only a handful of “serious” researched biographies of contemporary international chefs such as Julia Child, Alice Waters (Reardon; Riley), and Bernard Loiseux (Chelminski)—the last perhaps precipitated by an increased interest in this chef following his suicide after his restaurant lost one of its Michelin stars. Despite a handful of collective biographical studies of Australian chefs from the later-1980s on (Jenkins; O’Donnell and Knox; Brien), there are even fewer sustained biographical studies of Australian chefs or cooks (Clifford-Smith’s 2004 study of “the supermarket chef,” Bernard King, is a notable exception). Throughout such investigations, as well as in other popular food writing in magazines and cookbooks, there is some recognition that influential chefs and cooks have worked, and continue to work, outside such renowned urban culinary centres as Paris, London, New York, and Sydney. The Michelin starred restaurants of rural France, the so-called “gastropubs” of rural Britain and the advent of the “star-chef”-led country bed and breakfast establishment in Australia and New Zealand, together with the proliferation of farmer’s markets and a public desire to consume locally sourced, and ecologically sustainable, produce (Nabhan), has focused fresh attention on what could be called “the rural/regional chef”. However, despite the above, little attention has focused on the Australian non-urban chef/cook outside of the pages of a small number of key food writing magazines such as Australian Gourmet Traveller and Vogue Entertaining + Travel. Setting the Scene with an Australian Country Example: Armidale and Guyra In 2004, the Armidale-Dumaresq Council (of the New England region, New South Wales, Australia) adopted the slogan “Foodies thrive in Armidale” to market its main city for the next three years. With a population of some 20,000, Armidale’s main industry (in economic terms) is actually education and related services, but the latest Tourist Information Centre’s Dining Out in Armidale (c. 2006) brochure lists some 25 restaurants, 9 bistros and brasseries, 19 cafés and 5 fast food outlets featuring Australian, French, Italian, Mediterranean, Chinese, Thai, Indian and “international” cuisines. The local Yellow Pages telephone listings swell the estimation of the total number of food-providing businesses in the city to 60. Alongside the range of cuisines cited above, a large number of these eateries foreground the use of fresh, local foods with such phrases as “local and regional produce,” “fresh locally grown produce,” “the finest New England ingredients” and locally sourced “New England steaks, lamb and fresh seafood” repeatedly utilised in advertising and other promotional material. Some thirty kilometres to the north along the New England highway, the country town of Guyra, proclaimed a town in 1885, is the administrative and retail centre for a shire of some 2,200 people. Situated at 1,325 metres above sea level, the town is one of the highest in Australia with its main industries those of fine wool and lamb, beef cattle, potatoes and tomatoes. Until 1996, Guyra had been home to a large regional abattoir that employed some 400 staff at the height of its productivity, but rationalisation of the meat processing industry closed the facility, together with its associated pet food processor, causing a downturn in employment, local retail business, and real estate values. Since 2004, Guyra’s economy has, however, begun to recover after the town was identified by the Costa Group as the perfect site for glasshouse grown tomatoes. Perfect, due to its rare combination of cool summers (with an average of less than two days per year with temperatures over 30 degrees celsius), high winter light levels and proximity to transport routes. The result: 3.3 million kilograms of truss, vine harvested, hydroponic “Top of the Range” tomatoes currently produced per annum, all year round, in Guyra’s 5-hectare glasshouse: Australia’s largest, opened in December 2005. What residents (of whom I am one) call the “tomato-led recovery” has generated some 60 new local jobs directly related to the business, and significant flow on effects in terms of the demand for local services and retail business. This has led to substantial rates of renovation and building of new residential and retail properties, and a noticeably higher level of trade flowing into the town. Guyra’s main street retail sector is currently burgeoning and stories of its renewal have appeared in the national press. Unlike many similar sized inland towns, there are only a handful of empty shops (and most of these are in the process of being renovated), and new commercial premises have recently been constructed and opened for business. Although a small town, even in Australian country town terms, Guyra now has 10 restaurants, hotel bistros and cafés. A number of these feature local foods, with one pub’s bistro regularly featuring the trout that is farmed just kilometres away. Assessing the Contribution of Local Chefs and Cooks In mid-2007, a pilot survey to begin to explore the contribution of the regional chef in these two close, but quite distinct, rural and regional areas was sent to the chefs/cooks of the 70 food-serving businesses in Armidale and Guyra that I could identify. Taking into account the 6 returns that revealed a business had closed, moved or changed its name, the 42 replies received represented a response rate of 65.5per cent (or two thirds), representatively spread across the two towns. Answers indicated that the businesses comprised 18 restaurants, 13 cafés, 6 bistro/brasseries, 1 roadhouse, 1 takeaway/fast food and 3 bed and breakfast establishments. These businesses employed 394 staff, of whom 102 were chefs and/cooks, or 25.9 per cent of the total number of staff then employed by these establishments. In answer to a series of questions designed to ascertain the roles played by these chefs/cooks in their local communities, as well as more widely, I found a wide range of inputs. These chefs had, for instance, made a considerable contribution to their local economies in the area of fostering local jobs and a work culture: 40 (95 per cent) had worked with/for another local business including but not exclusively food businesses; 30 (71.4 per cent) had provided work experience opportunities for those aspiring to work in the culinary field; and 22 (more than half) had provided at least one apprenticeship position. A large number had brought outside expertise and knowledge with them to these local areas, with 29 (69 per cent) having worked in another food business outside Armidale or Guyra. In terms of community building and sustainability, 10 (or almost a quarter) had assisted or advised the local Council; 20 (or almost half) had worked with local school children in a food-related way; 28 (two thirds) had helped at least one charity or other local fundraising group. An extra 7 (bringing the cumulative total to 83.3 per cent) specifically mentioned that they had worked with/for the local gallery, museum and/or local history group. 23 (more than half) had been involved with and/or contributed to a local festival. The question of whether they had “contributed anything else important, helpful or interesting to the community” elicited the following responses: writing a food or wine column for the local paper (3 respondents), delivering TAFE teacher workshops (2 respondents), holding food demonstrations for Rotary and Lions Clubs and school fetes (5 respondents), informing the public about healthy food (3 respondents), educating the public about environmental issues (2 respondents) and working regularly with Meals on Wheels or a similar organisation (6 respondents, or 14.3 per cent). One respondent added his/her work as a volunteer driver for the local ambulance transport service, the only non-food related response to this question. Interestingly, in line with the activity of well-known celebrity chefs, in addition to the 3 chefs/cooks who had written a food or wine column for the local newspaper, 11 respondents (more than a quarter of the sample) had written or contributed to a cookbook or recipe collection. One of these chefs/cooks, moreover, reported that he/she produced a weblog that was “widely read”, and also contributed to international food-related weblogs and websites. In turn, the responses indicated that the (local) communities—including their governing bodies—also offer some support of these chefs and cooks. Many respondents reported they had been featured in, or interviewed and/or photographed for, a range of media. This media comprised the following: the local newspapers (22 respondents, 52.4 per cent), local radio stations (19 respondents, 45.2 per cent), regional television stations (11 respondents, 26.2 per cent) and local websites (8 respondents, 19 per cent). A number had also attracted other media exposure. This was in the local, regional area, especially through local Council publications (31 respondents, 75 per cent), as well as state-wide (2 respondents, 4.8 per cent) and nationally (6 respondents, 14.3 per cent). Two of these local chefs/cooks (or 4.8 per cent) had attracted international media coverage of their activities. It is clear from the above that, in the small area surveyed, rural and regional chefs/cooks make a considerable contribution to their local communities, with all the chefs/cooks who replied making some, and a number a major, contribution to those communities, well beyond the requirements of their paid positions in the field of food preparation and service. The responses tendered indicate that these chefs and cooks contributed regularly to local public events, institutions and charities (with a high rate of contribution to local festivals, school programs and local charitable activities), and were also making an input into public education programs, local cultural institutions, political and social debates of local importance, as well as the profitability of other local businesses. They were also actively supporting not only the future of the food industry as a whole, but also the viability of their local communities, by providing work experience opportunities and taking on local apprentices for training and mentorship. Much more than merely food providers, as a group, these chefs and cooks were, it appears, also operating as food historians, public intellectuals, teachers, activists and environmentalists. They were, moreover, operating as content producers for local media while, at the same time, acting as media producers and publishers. Conclusion The terms “chef” and “cook” can be diversely defined. All definitions, however, commonly involve a sense of professionalism in food preparation reflecting some specialist knowledge and skill in the culinary arts, as well as various levels of creativity, experience and responsibility. In terms of the specific duties that chefs and professional cooks undertake every day, almost all publications on the subject deal specifically with workplace related activities such as food and other supply ordering, staff management, menu planning and food preparation and serving. This is constant across culinary textbooks (see, for instance, Culinary Institute of America 2002) and more discursive narratives about the professional chef such as the bestselling autobiographical musings of Anthony Bourdain, and Michael Ruhlman’s journalistic/biographical investigations of US chefs (Soul; Reach). An alternative preliminary examination, and categorisation, of the roles these professionals play outside their kitchens reveals, however, a much wider range of community based activities and inputs than such texts suggest. It is without doubt that the chefs and cooks who responded to the survey discussed above have made, and are making, a considerable contribution to their local New England communities. It is also without doubt that these contributions are of considerable value, and valued by, those country communities. Further research will have to consider to what extent these contributions, and the significance and influence of these chefs and cooks in those communities are mirrored, or not, by other country (as well as urban) chefs and cooks, and their communities. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Engaging Histories: Australian Historical Association Regional Conference, at the University of New England, September 2007. I would like to thank the session’s participants for their insightful comments on that presentation. A sincere thank you, too, to the reviewers of this article, whose suggestions assisted my thinking on this piece. Research to complete this article was carried out whilst a Visiting Fellow with the Research School of Humanities, the Australian National University. References Armidale Tourist Information Centre. Dining Out in Armidale [brochure]. Armidale: Armidale-Dumaresq Council, c. 2006. Baker-Clark, C. A. 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