The British and the Grand Tour (Routledge Revivals)

Download or read book The British and the Grand Tour (Routledge Revivals) written by Jeremy Black and published by Taylor & Francis US. This book was released on 2011 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1985, this is a history of the Grand Tour, undertaken by young men in the eighteenth century to complete their education - a tour usually to France, Italy and Switzerland, and sometimes encompassing Germany. Rather than being another popular treatment of the theme, this is a scholarly analysis of the motives, purposes, activities and achievements of those who made the Grand Tour. The book considers to what extent the Grand Tour did fulfil its theoretical educational function, or whether travellers merely parroted the observations of their guidebooks. It also indicates the importance of the Grand Tour in introducing foreign customs into Britain and extending the cosmopolitanism of the European upper classes.