Elysian Landscapes and Cultural Self-Fashioning in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters from Turkey and Italy

Abstract

Abstract: This article traces Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's repeated references to the Ancient Greek afterworld, Elysium, in her accounts of her respective residences in Turkey in 1717 and Italy from 1739 until 1756. I argue that Montagu uses Elysium to construct a distinctly feminine discourse about traveling, reimagining it as a voluntary death that releases her from social roles and national affiliation. Montagu's evolving discussion of Elysium coincides with her self-fashioning as an authoritative woman travel writer, who offers an alternative to the superficial cultural engagement of the eighteenth-century male Grand Tourist.