Genius loci: Vernon Lee e la via amatoriale alla scrittura della storia

A central figure in the Anglo-florentine community at the turn of the 20th century, Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was a major contributor to the debates on aesthetics, history and literature in the transition from Victorian culture to modernism. This essay highlights a hitherto neglected feature of her intellectual profile: her criticism of academic history, which was consequent to her adoption of the intellectual persona of the “amateur” or, as we would say today, the independent scholar. Lee expressed this criticism most cogently in her writings on the genius loci –the spirit of places– which comprise several collections of historically-informed travelogues. In fact, Lee’s writings on the genius loci should not be seen simply as travel writing, as they have been so far. They are also a peculiar form of history writing – a way of knowing and reviving the past that was consciously different from, and alternative to, the professionalized way adopted by museums and academic institutions. A complex and multifaceted intellectual –a cosmopolitan searching for roots, an authoritative “dilettante”, as she is defined in this essay– Lee should be recognized as one of the formidable women who deployed the resources of the amateur tradition to effect a profound renewal of historical writing between the late 19th and the early 20th century.