Images de l’Italie dans les chroniques de voyage de Guy de Maupassant : de la ville-ruine à la ville-musée et du « locus horribilis » au jardin paradisiaque*
Images of Italy in Guy de Maupassant’s Travelling Chronicles: from City-ruin to City-museum and from "locus horribilis" to Paradise Garden

Images of Italy in Guy de Maupassant’s Travelling Chronicles: from City-ruin to City-museum and from "locus horribilis" to Paradise Garden

Summary/Abstract: Maupassant had a passion for travel, fuelled by his profession as a writer and journalist, by his illness or by his need to discover near and far lands. These experiences offered him the material for several chronicles published in newspapers. Our study will highlight only the texts dedicated to Italy, published after 1885, which allow us to see his unique manner of exploring and discovering the grand cities of art, highly appreciated by his contemporaries, amongst which Venice, Naples, Palermo and Florence. Therefore, apart from the split between his book-based knowledge and his personal opinions, we can notice a vision hesitating between the past and the present. This seems to alternately favor either a sharp perception of the contrasts, if not of the naturalistic aspects, leading to a genuine imagery of the ruined City and the "locus horribilis", or an appreciation of a sumptuous and still impressive past, hence the images of the museum-City, the City as a painting and the Paradise garden.

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