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The Italian
Experience
By Mathew Underwood
Monmouth College offers
a variety of study abroad locations around the globe where students
can go and study. I took advantage of this opportunity this past
fall semester to take a trip to Florence, Italy to study Italian and
art history.
As both a classics and English major
there were a couple of locations that I found interesting such as
London and Greece. However, I decided to do as many other eighteenth
and nineteenth century British and American authors did and go to
Italy for some culture. I saw most of the clichéd tourists spots in
Florence, minus gli Uffizi, and I also visited some of the
more out-of-the way locations of Florence, such as Casa Guidi where
the Brownings wrote their poetry and entertained their strictly
British, high society guests. I went to Venice where I visited the
house on the Venetian Canal where Lord Byron lived, stopped by
Rome and saw Nathaniel Hawethorne’s Marble Faun in the Cappeline
museum as well as the Coliseum which is pictured above; and romped around the famed Tuscan countryside eating
Pecorino cheese and drinking vintage Chianti; yet not once did the
Corn Laws trouble my mind.
The academic coursework in all the
classes combined was equal to about two 350 level courses here at
Monmouth. I took courses on Architecture, Italian, Literature, and
drawing the human form, (yes the models were completely nude).
However, the faculty realized that the time we spent in Florence was
short and that the program should be flexible in allowing students
freedom to experience the culture of the country. And so I did.
The experience of staying with an
Italian family and living day to day in an Italian city was
tremendous. To be completely absorbed into the language and culture
was terrifically edifying and has engendered a great deal of
confidence in myself. It has made me more sensitive to both other
cultures and my own while forcing me to be more critical about my
lifestyle and more generally the American lifestyle. I don’t wish to
align myself too closely with Miss Honeychurch, but admittedly some
of the difficulties Forster creates for her parallel closely with
some of my own.
Overall the trip was an invaluable
experience. I would go so far as to say that to not go abroad is
like being deficient a sense. I would recommend the program to
everyone whatever their major. In fact, if I were in charge,
everyone at Monmouth would be taking Greek, Latin, and studying
abroad.
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