We are getting ready for Christmas in Rome...and are planning our pre-travel reading, watching, and dining seriously. As all good courses begin, we begin ours with a syllabus.
A Florence syllabus might be a bit ambitious (we have jobs and stuff), but we do want to read
Selected reading:
Non-Fiction
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ambitious, but one of us definitely should have read it)
Goethe's Italian Journey (1786-1788). Massively popular account that popularized travel writing along with it.
Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (1869). Since we want to know what Mark Twain has to say about everything, we'd better look into what he thinks about Italy. And travel. And everything.
Henry James' Italian Hours (1909). It's dubious, but it is said that Henry James actually warms up a bit in his travel descriptions. We'll believe it when we read it.
DH Lawrence's Etruscan Places (1932). Lawrence visits Etruscan tombs and gets generally very excited.
Robert Graves' I Claudius.
And fun to take along for the ride: A Literary Companion to Rome, by John Verriano.
Selected viewing
Obviously, Roman Holiday over and over and over. And Three Coins in the Fountain.
Felini's La Dolce Vita
and
A Florence syllabus might be a bit ambitious (we have jobs and stuff), but we do want to read
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture.
Selected reading:
Non-Fiction
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ambitious, but one of us definitely should have read it)
Goethe's Italian Journey (1786-1788). Massively popular account that popularized travel writing along with it.
Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (1869). Since we want to know what Mark Twain has to say about everything, we'd better look into what he thinks about Italy. And travel. And everything.
Henry James' Italian Hours (1909). It's dubious, but it is said that Henry James actually warms up a bit in his travel descriptions. We'll believe it when we read it.
DH Lawrence's Etruscan Places (1932). Lawrence visits Etruscan tombs and gets generally very excited.
Fiction
Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever"
EM Forster's A Room with a ViewRobert Graves' I Claudius.
And fun to take along for the ride: A Literary Companion to Rome, by John Verriano.
Selected viewing
Obviously, Roman Holiday over and over and over. And Three Coins in the Fountain.
Felini's La Dolce Vita
and
Rossellini's Open City
Listening
The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan (aired between 2007 and 2012, won several awards)
Eating/cooking
Marcella Hazan and Elizabeth David non-stop! (As soon as we have a functional kitchen.)
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