Rivista | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Fascicolo | 49 | 2015
Articolo | Learned Letters from Italy
Learned Letters from Italy
Classical Rome, Vesuvius, and Etna in Philosophical Transactions (1665-1700)
Abstract
The study of the relations that the Royal Society established with Italy in the years 1665-1700 has generally been neglected by academic debate. Our purpose here is to show that there is still a lot to learn from the huge amount of letter articles that were published in vols. 1-22 of the Society's scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, and that the type of information that its first two editors, Henry Oldenburg (c. 1619-1677) and Edmond Halley (1656-1742), circulated since 1665 was not only related to the field of Natural Philosophy, but also contributed to arouse prospective travellers' interest in the Bel Paese and its artistic and naturalistic treasures. Seen from an intertextual perspective, and divided into two macro text-based and thematic sections, the writings connected with the city of Rome, Vesuvius, and Etna will demonstrate that the journal's editorial choices were in perfect harmony with the literary trends of the time, and that the main socio-cultural phenomenon of the Enlightenment, that of the Grand Tour, has its roots in the scientific exchanges that English learned academies wanted to have since the late Stuart Era.
Pubblicato 01 Settembre 2015 | Lingua: en
Keywords The early Philosophical Transactions • Vesuvius • Etna • Rome
Copyright © 2015 Manuela D’Amore. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-49-15-7
