A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 1

Moore, John, 1729-1802Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
460K words
Chapters
46

Tags

English Originals Culture Social ObservationTravel GuideTravel WritingLife EssaysExotic CultureCultural ChangeFolk Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 1 (of 2) by John MooreAuthor: Moore, John, 1729-1802,Language: English, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Feb 17, 2019

Editor's review

This is the first of the two volumes of John Moore's A View of Society and Manners in Italy, a letter-form travelogue common in eighteenth-century European travel literature. Writing as a traveler, the author records social life, manners and customs, and details of daily life across Italy. The style carries the discursive tone of an Enlightenment observer, combining descriptions of local conditions with judgments on institutions and national character. For readers studying eighteenth-century European travel writing, British cultural imaginings of Italy, and the history of social customs, the book offers concrete and vivid textual material. Note its historical limitations: the author's judgments carry personal bias and the prejudices of the British intellectual circles of his day, and should not be cited as objective ethnography. As a public-domain e-book, it is best read as both historical source and literary text, alongside background knowledge of the period, so that observation, hearsay, and prejudice can be better distinguished.

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Reading tips

  1. Learn about the eighteenth-century Grand Tour first; the author's perspective is easier to understand once you start the main text
  2. Excerpt by city or theme, recording descriptions of customs separately from evaluative judgments
  3. When encountering the author's evaluative statements, note his standpoint and compare with other travelogues
  4. Use the table of contents to select chapters on cities of interest; strict sequential reading is not required

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a travelogue? It is a collection of travel observations in travelogue form, written as letters and recording the author's experiences and reflections in Italy. It is neither a fictional novel nor a systematic modern research work; read it as an eighteenth-century travel literature text.
Will reading only Volume 1 affect my understanding? Volume 1 can be read independently; its content covers the author's observations in parts of Italy. Volume 2 continues the same journey and approach. For a complete itinerary or comparison of views before and after, read both volumes; for selected reading, Volume 1 already conveys the book's style.
Are the descriptions in the book still accurate today? They cannot be taken as a portrait of contemporary Italy. The book records eighteenth-century social conditions and the author's personal impressions, and society has changed enormously over two centuries. Its value is historical and literary, not as current practical information.
Is the original English difficult to read? Eighteenth-century English syntax and vocabulary differ from contemporary English, with many long sentences and parenthetical insertions; some spelling and punctuation retain old conventions. Readers with a solid English reading foundation can get through it; beginners should read selected chapters alongside annotated editions or background materials.

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About the author

Moore, John, 1729-1802 Author

John Moore (1729-1802) was an English author of the late eighteenth century, though details of his life are limited in publicly available sources. Four of his works are held in the collection, all of them travel accounts: the two-volume A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany and the two-volume A View of Society and Manners in Italy. Judging from the titles and volume structure, Moore travelled extensively on the European continent and recorded the social life, customs and daily habits of France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy through an observer's eye, in a style of reportage rather than systematic theory. Works of this kind belong to the eighteenth-century European tradition of travel writing; they offered contemporary readers a window onto foreign societies and preserve useful material for later study of eighteenth-century European social history and travel literature.