Geography of a stereotype. A computational study on the Italian presence in the British nineteenth century novel
Often chosen as the privileged setting for plays, poems, and novels, Italy has been one of the core English literary imageries from the Middle Ages to the late Victorian era and beyond. However, more than an actual geographical space, the presence of Italian locations within the corpus of British literature can be configured as a distinctive discursive practice disclosing a variety of literary possibilities or, as what Roland Barthes would say, a situation d’écriture: a writing situation capable of conveying an inexhaustible basin of themes and conventions.