Rambling in Sicily: Hybrid Mobility and Liminal Identities in Early Nineteenth Century Periodical Writing

Abstract

The essay focuses on the interaction between the discoursive patterns of Rambles in Sicily, in 1816. By an Artist, a travelogue published anonymously from 1817 to 1818 in The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, and the development of a hybrid travelling identity centred on a concept of mobility that oscillates from seeing to acting. Travelling in Sicily between the decline of the Grand Tour and the birth of mass tourism seems to lead to an identity construction encouraged by the polychromatic nature of the place travelled. The travelogue is deemed «a private account of an authentic and autobiographic experience of mobility in a public space» (Liedke 2018: 6). The concept of the traveller can be placed in Fussel’s category of the «genuine traveller» (Fussel 1980: 39), i.e. between the explorer and the tourist. Following De Certeau’s (1984: 30) notion that «space is a practiced place», Sicily is more than an alternative destination and a source for self hegemonic projection: it is a space acted by the traveller, an Artist and probably a male, who chooses it mostly for its inherent interest. A controversial space which dialogically interacts with the traveller’s identity, Sicily allows the Artist to differentiate himself from most Grand Tourists and from the increasing number of travellers who, after 1815, invaded Italy only to consume places