Florence, Dante and Me: A Canadian student goes Italian for a year, 1960-61

ISBN-13: 9780995876002 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 256 str.

Dr Robert Stuart Thomson

Opis

The author, Robert Thomson, studied Italian in 1960-61 at the Universities of Perugia and Florence. He was on a junior year scholarship funded by the Ministero degli affari esteri. The purpose of the scholarship was to study Italian and improve his conversation skills. This he did but he also did other things as well: studying voice with a teacher of bel canto method and visiting galleries, museums, buildings and monuments of interest. A close reading of Dante leads Thomson to a moral and spiritual awakening about the materialistic influence of schools and family on his life. The year is rich in experience and Thomson keeps a detailed record of it all in letters which he sends to his fiancee in Vancouver, B.C. Most of "Florence, Dante and Me" is taken verbatim from these letters. This book also contains about eighty photos, many taken from Thomson's private collection. These photos are not presented in clusters, rather they are integrated with the text in order to illuminate it. There are fifteen pages of footnotes, many of which comment in detail on complex issues in the text from the perspective of 2017.