Tra le lingue, tra le culture: intorno al manoscritto italiano “Ville romane: in memoriam” di Vernon Lee

Abstract

Vernon Lee’s (1856-1935) identity was significantly shaped by her cosmopolitan and multilingual upbringing. Born in France to British parents, she spent her adult life in Italy, and her readings and correspondence suggest that she was a plurilingual intellectual and writer. Because she lived and worked in such a multicultural milieu, it is difficult to define Lee’s writing from the viewpoint of sheer nationality, which is not as relevant as her linguistic identity. Indeed, Lee’s works are suspended between England, where her readership is based, and Italy, whose culture and art she explores with passion and intelligence. Written in Italian around 1890, the unpublished essay “Ville Romane: in memoriam” is a significant exception within Lee’s production. After a short investigation into the reasons why Lee chose English as her literary language, the article evaluates the relevance of “Ville Romane” within Lee’s reflections on landscape and cultural memory – a theme she often explores in her travelogues and aesthetic writings. Lee’s written Italian is examined with specific focus on rhetorical strategies and lexical choices.