“‘…in those few bright (Abruzzi) days’: Edward Lear’s landscaping gaze and the discovery of Abruzzo”

The article discusses Edward Lear’s travelogue Illustrated Excursions in Italy (1846), which was occasioned by Lear’s travels in the Abruzzi in 1843 and 1844. The originality of Lear’s Excursions as one of the first accounts of an almost unexplored region and above all its unconventional form that brings together images, words and music, prompt further examination of the way in which Lear conjures up a lively picture of the Abruzzi through the lenses of his landscaping gaze and by means of diverse media. To this end, the first section of the essay investigates the extent to which Lear embraced the conventional and wholly literary image of the Abruzzi conveyed in British novels and history books, and in which aspects his travelogue differs from other similar works. The following part focuses on Lear’s intentional and unintentional use of the aesthetic categories of the picturesque and the beautiful in the description of both Abruzzi places and people, while the last section addresses Lear’s subsequent idealization of his experience in the Abruzzi viewed in the light of his diary entries.