Iconografie dei viaggi cognitivi nei (para)testi del Settecento

In the 18th century, Western Europe witnessed a true literary fad: the increasing popularity of allegorical texts dealing with journeys in search of truth and wisdom (Addison 1711; Johnson 1760; Hawkesworth 1753; Fordyce 1757; Goldsmith 1759; Barbauld 1773). These literary works were also written in the form of a modern “specula principum” and influenced later literary production in the cultures of south-eastern Europe (Reljković 1767; Obradović 1788, 1793; Stojković 1800). It is interesting to note that the texts contain a peculiar iconography of the travels, and the corresponding descriptions of the landscapes show strong relations to the initiation journeys of the Freemasons, always marked by a precise iconography related to the environments of their rites. This paper therefore analyzes the iconographic aspects of these cognitive travels, present either as images in para-textual elements, or in the “descriptio loci” of the texts themselves.