Memory and the Trevi Fountain

This book explores the Trevi Fountain through the prism of cultural memory to reveal the processes that make it so iconic and performative. Using a cross-disciplinary approach that includes imagery in art, literature, film, music and the e-Trevi of the internet, this volume looks at how memory travels between media.

Why do you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain and make a wish? This book links cultural memory with the materiality of the Trevi Fountain as historical monument and uses this perspective to examine its imagery in art, literature, film and music, concluding with the e-Trevi on the internet. How memory takes different pathways is of current interest in memory studies and the cross-disciplinary approach taken here considers how memory travels between media as well as exploring related issues such as forgetting and media convergence. Yet there is a dark side to the Trevi, previously unexplored, of memory linked to water, which runs counter to its usual blue sky image, and this ambiguity is unravelled. The book also conveys the international, national and localized meanings of the Fountain and describes the changing ideologies that are hidden in the many performances the monument is made to give. The Trevi is symbolic of both commodification and misogyny, symbols that flow with changing and contemporary meanings. Throw your coin with care!

Autorentext

Pamela Krist completed her PhD in Italian Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is now an independent researcher with current areas of interest in memory and colour, and memory and water.

Inhalt

CONTENTS: Past, Present, Future Fountain - Shaping the Trevi in History and Memory - Three Popes and the Fountain: Reworking Myths of Power - Picturing the Trevi in Engraved Futures and False Pasts - Literary Nymphs in Search of the Remembered Fountain - Glamorous Disguises for Political Undercurrents in Trevi Film and Music - The Branded Monument and Digital Memory - Fountain for Memory