"La Campania e il Grand Tour. Immagini, luoghi e racconti di viaggio tra Settecento e Ottocento".

The English poet Samuel Rogers could be defined a ‘picturesque’ traveller, always in search of «scenery of the grandeur». He could also be added to the English literary tradition of James Thomson, Thomas Gray and Edward Young. Educated as a Neo-classical scholar as well as dis- tinguished for a Romantic literary taste – after Wordsworth’s death he was offered the «Poet Laureateship», but he refused – Rogers’ poetical inspiration was strongly stimulated by the two journeys made in Italy in 1814 and in 1821. The final result was the poem Italy, an illustrated book collecting prose tales and blank verses and dedicated to places, people, «Italian traditions and superstitions». The in-verse ‘translation’ of the Grand Tour in Campania is, perhaps, the most interesting part of this work. The tour in Campania occupies also a large section of his travel-Journal, a kind of preparatory text for the poem in which Rogers describes the Italian re- gion from Napoli, to Paestum and «the many faces to remember, more than in England».