“I suspect I know a thing or two about Italy”: Byron’s travel guide to (sex in) Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following his self-imposed exile from Britain in 1816, Byron travelled across Europe and eventually settled in Italy. From here he wrote hundreds of frank, witty, and vibrantly detailed letters. Covering everything from politics to prostitutes, Byron's animated accounts make for riotous reading, and their appreciation of foreign cultures and customs sets them apart from the majority of contemporary travel writing (tarnished by a patina of discontented yearning for Britain and British things). The first half of this article considers Byron's deft reconstruction and subversion of contemporary travel writing conventions in his Italian letters. Cloaking the worldly cosmopolite's mockery of the parochial British reader behind a veneer of generic conformity, Byron plays into travel literature's masculinist orientation by presenting himself in the established guise of the affluent aristocratic tourist encountering the tantalising-yet-dangerous feminised foreign. Accepted into the houses and hearts of a number of Italian women, Byron gained an unusual level of insight into the private intimacies of those he wittily dubs “the continental incontinent”. The second part of this article focuses on Byron's knowledge of Italian sociosexual culture, and acknowledges the unique insights and ethnographic detail embedded within his performative tales of libidinous Italian femininity - designed to titillate and educate in equal measure.