For the Fall Semester 2021, our students of Trienno have been working on understanding the English Romantic Poets in Florence: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Robert Browning.
To take our studies out of the classroom and into the world we have gone on tour in Florence, walking in the footsteps of these poets while reading their words and talking about their lives.
Our itinerary first took us to the English Cemetery, where Julia Bolton Holloway introduced us to the importance of this place for the anti-slavery movement of the mid-19th century and our students presented about some of the most illustrious of the cemetery's residents. We then discussed Shelley and his famous "Ode to the West Wind" and Notes on Sculpture in Florence and Rome at the Boboli Gardens, in the very spot where he wrote his own impression of Florence. Lastly, we toured Casa Guidi, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning's home on Via Maggio, where got a firsthand glimpse of what these poet's lives were like in Florence and what was important to them.
