Weaving a Journey: 19th-Century Iceland in an Italian Female Narrative

Abstract

<p>At the end of the XIX century an Italian woman scholar and writer, Maria Savi Lopez, publishes the fictionalized version of a journey to Iceland, <em>Nei Paesi del Nord </em>(<em>In Northern Countries</em>, 1893). Her narrative discourse intends to weave informative and cultural topics about this remote island, depicting a group of English people sailing there from their home country; the result is a kind of choral narrative, that spread heterogeneous information about an unknown culture, folklore, and natural environment to the Italian reading public.</p><p>The author interweaves all these data in a structured net, where different voices perform specific roles and encourage the readers to partake adventures while sailing into a protective, comfortable steamer.</p><p><br></p>