Il mito letterario di Paestum nel secolo d’oro del viaggio. Sondaggi

Abstract

This short work, result of studies about earlier testimonies, tries to retrace the literary report of Paestum during its great fortune age and the building of an imaginary and a myth, that has a complex geographic articulation, also in Europe. During the Eighteenth century «promenades», excursions, routes intensify throughout this lost world. Italian, French and German scientists reach the ancient Poseidonia to discover those abandoned temples, although they have always lied there, on that swampy ground, inside that town walls lending to the city an irregular map. Therefore stories superimpose about this place, whose image is established on and nourished from different artistic tastes and cultural tendencies. This image follows traces of an ancient interest and it clarifies throughout a Romantic taste for a strong nature and the travel is a human society roots discovery.